Your Daily Random Comment

[sneepity]

[Booknerd]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

[jaspattack]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

If we look at last year's top 5 in each division for Missouri, you'll find that a majority of the top performing teams in the state come from the top five largest cities in the state. In Division B, the top 5 were Ladue, Wydown, Pembroke Hill, West and Oak Grove in that order. Of these five, four are located either in or around the two largest cities in the state (Kansas City and St. Louis in that order). Pembroke Hill and Oak Grove are located in the Kansas City area (with Oak Grove being located in a suburb), while Ladue and Wydown are located in the St. Louis area (with Wydown being located in Clayton, a suburb). West is in Columbia proper, the fourth largest city in the state.

Looking at Division C, last year's top 5 were Pembroke Hill, Ladue, Clayton, John Burroughs, and Central. As stated previously, Pembroke Hill is in the Kansas City area while Ladue, Clayton and John Burroughs are in the St. Louis area. Clayton is the only one out of these three to be located in a suburb. Finally, Central is located in Springfield, which is the third largest city in the state.

Overall, only three of the top five teams in each division were located in a suburb, with two of those teams being from Division B and one of them being from Division C. However, all ten teams come from the four largest cities in the state. I think that's mainly because three of the five have feeders/pretty cemented legacies (Ladue and Pembroke Hill have both middle and high schools, and Wydown feeds into Clayton), which leads to these three placements being pretty much set while the other two kind of tend to bounce around from year to year. I think it'd be worthwhile to examine the top ten in this scenario (and also more than one year), but this post is pretty long as it is so I'll just leave it at that.

[raytay]

When your friends are playing skribble.io and your name comes up and they draw you as a basic stick person with the words “science is cool” and everyone knows it’s you

[Umaroth]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

All suburban schools down here, Troy, Kraemer, Jeffrey Trail, Canyon Crest, etc.

[pepperonipi]

Pepperonipi, uhh, your pet robot may or may not be hanging around bad influences.

yea, he hangs around me too much

Pi-Bot: Posts random message that barely makes sense
Everyone: OMG HES SO SMART HES GONNA TAKE OVER THE WORLD SOMEDAY

because he will

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

Meh, sorta in Florida. Top 3 which are generally constant (Boca, Archimedean, OSS), Boca is really the only suburban one.

Also, happy Memorial Day!!
It's always saddening to realize that the freedom we get to enjoy every day was not easily earned, and that people are constantly putting their own lives at risk to protect this nation. I doubt any veterans/active service members will be reading this, but if you are, thank you.

[pb5754]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

In div B, all 10 of the top 10 teams in the state in 2020 were surburban. The same is true of div C, unless you want to consider Edison "a city" (it is the 5th most populous municipality in NJ but its population is only just over 100,000), in which J.P. Stevens HS is located in "a city". To be fair though, practically all of NJ is suburban anyways (I'd say the only real cities in NJ are Newark and Jersey City, with populations of 285,154 and 270,753, respectively).

[Tailsfan101]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

At the 2019 Idaho state tournament, all of the top 15 Division B teams were based in the Treasure Valley (Boise, Meridian, Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Kuna, etc.). Actually, the only Div. B teams we have that aren't in the Treasure Valley are from Pocatello (#5 in population in ID, ~55000), and one from Ammon (population ~16000), a suburb of Idaho Falls (#4, ~61000). Division C, even though having way fewer teams, is a bit more varied; of the eight C teams registered for 2019, five were from the Treasure Valley, one was from Twin Falls (#8 in ID, ~50000), one was from Weiser (~5000), and one from Rigby (~4500, fairly close to Idaho Falls). In general, the Treasure Valley dominates Idaho competition, especially in Division B.

[EastStroudsburg13]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

Pretty much the entirety of PA C has been dominated by Philly suburbs. The two out-of-region contenders, Cumberland Valley and Shady Side, are in the suburbs of Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, respectively. So it's safe to say that generally affluent suburban areas dominate. I believe the last team that didn't fall into this category that placed top 5 was Athens, which is rural.

PA B is slightly less dominated, mostly because of Harlan Rowe, which is in the same district as Athens. But Springhouse is in an Allentown suburb, Bala Cynwyd and Strath Haven are in Philadelphia suburbs, Eagle View is in a Harrisburg suburb, and Shady Side is in a Pittsburgh suburb.

Here is a map I've been maintaining with the locations of PA schools. Circles with stars in them show the most successful teams (i.e. top 10 in 2019). Circles with diamonds qualified for states in 2019, and Circles with dots qualified for states in any year from 2015-2018. You can see it's pretty evident that there's not a ton of success happening in the urban areas.

Participation in urban Philadelphia is definitely improving, thanks to the great work done by the Urban Initiative, but I think it's always going to be an uphill battle. Science Olympiad by design requires a decent bit of resources and participation to succeed, and that's just not easily found outside of large schools in affluent suburbs that have the capacity to compete at a high level. Generally, the competitive urban schools I've seen have tended to be private or magnet, which is not a bad thing as it does pull from urban populations, but it's still a point that must be considered.

[MoMoney$$$;)0)]

Just curious, are other states' powerhouses mostly from suburban areas of the big cities in the state? Like in Illinois teams from towns outside of Chicago tend to do much better than ChiPubSchools, even though ChiPubSchools makes up almost a quarter of the total number of students in Illinois. _{*cough cough* suburb kids you're too good for us city kids}

So are other states also dominated by suburban areas? Or does the big city dominate?

I think Ohio has the same problem (actually that Suburban schools are at an advantage for having better funding), and I think it's great if more schools get the initiative to join except for the fact that many of them don't have the funding to do so. If we look at Cleveland (2nd most populated city in Ohio) as a whole you will find that the top 5 schools from both Northeastern and Northern Regions are all from Suburbs, and the ones from the cities are always at a disadvantage from not having sponsors or high levels of funding. Now looking further into both Division B and C for Ohio, both divisions show teams in the top 15 are all Suburban schools (unless i'm mistaken), which is not necessarily a good showing. I think as a whole we need to bring a bigger initiative in Ohio to bring a higher diversity of teams into every region, and also provide funding for the school that have lackluster support from the schools or sponsors.