Massage Chair!

For the last month or so, Child's store has been participating in a contest sponsored by one of their suppliers. Every time one of their dealers' sales associates sat a person down in a massage chair for a test drive, the customer could fill out an entry form and their name would be entered in a drawing for a free chair. If their name was drawn, both the customer and the sales associate would win a massage chair.

Last week, right before we left for our vacation to Texas (more on that later), Child received a call from her boss. "You won!"

Child screamed. We were in the car, stopped at a stoplight with the windows down, and got some curious looks from nearby cars. I rolled the windows up. Child was still screaming.

In short, Child had won a $4,000 massage chair.

Child's boss called up the customer who had won the chair, an older gentleman, but had a hard time getting the idea across.

"Sir, you won a free massage chair!"
"What are you selling?"
"Nothing! You won a free massage chair!"
"Yeah yeah, but what's the catch? I have to pay 'shipping' and 'warranty costs,' don't I."
"No, it's totally free!"
"Look, just tell me what you're selling."

Writers of the Future Winners by State

The first few sets of honorable mentions for the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest have been posted, and I thought it would be interesting to break the results down by state. In other words, which states had the highest ratio of winners to population?

There have been 121 Honorable Mentions (so far) from the 2nd quarter, and to increase the sample size I also looked at the 114 Honorable Mentions from the 1st quarter, for a total of 235. (For those who care, the results are shown in 10,000ths percent of state population.) Again, this is the ratio of winners to population, not the ratio of submitters to population.

The top five winners:

1. Utah: 5.5
2. Montana: 4.2
3. Alaska: 3
4. Oregon: 2.4
5. Washington: 2.2

Apparently, living in a Western state makes you a good writer. Or perhaps the good writers all move to Western states... Anyway, Utah blew away the competition, and Montana, Alaska, Oregon, and Washington weren't far behind. (I don't want to say that Utah being in the lead was entirely due to me *cough cough*, but I did get an honorable mention last quarter... :)

A handful of states didn't produce any winners at all (again, there might be more H. M.s to come from this quarter), but we've hidden them at the very bottom. Curiously, being Western isn't enough, since both Wyoming and Idaho (two of Utah's neighbors) didn't have any winners. A full listing of the results is below.

When we look at the percent of total Honorable Mentions by state, however, we start off as expected. California and Texas, with the largest and second-largest population respectively, have the most and second-most winners. California had over 9 percent of the total Honorable Mentions, and Texas had over 7 percent.

1. California: 9.1
2. Texas: 7.2
3. Washington: 6.7
4. Utah: 6.7
5. Massachusetts: 5.7

Also, while we're at it, everyone should check out the Writers of the Future forum! Kathy haunts it, Joni has been known to appear from time to time, and some past winners are always ready to give out advice. If you want some great discussions and the inside scoop on WotF, go there! Also, here's an RSS feed of the forum comments if you'd prefer that: http://stormhorse.com/wotf.xml.

All 50 states in order:

1. Utah: 5.5
2. Montana: 4.2
3. Alaska: 3
4. Oregon: 2.4
5. Washington: 2.2
6. Massachusetts: 1.9
7. Oklahoma: 1.7
8. Colorado: 1.3
9. Wisconsin: 1.3
10. Delaware: 1.2
11. Minnesota: 1.2
12. Connecticut: 1.1
13. North Carolina: 1.1
14. Arkansas: 1.1
15. Michigan: 0.8
16. Hawaii: 0.8
17. New Hampshire: 0.8
18. Maine: 0.8
19. Maryland: 0.7
20. Louisiana: 0.7
21. Missouri: 0.7
22. Iowa: 0.7
23. Virginia: 0.7
24. Arizona: 0.6
25. Pennsylvania: 0.6
26. Texas: 0.6
27. California: 0.5
28. New Mexico: 0.5
29. Kentucky: 0.5
30. Illinois: 0.5
31. Nevada: 0.4
32. Florida: 0.4
33. New Jersey: 0.3
34. Tennessee: 0.3
35. Indiana: 0.3
36. New York: 0.3
37. Ohio: 0.3
38. South Carolina: 0.2
39. Alabama: 0.2
40. Georgia: 0.1
41. Kansas: 0
42. North Dakota: 0
43. South Dakota: 0
44. Vermont: 0
45. Wyoming: 0
46. Mississippi: 0
47. Nebraska: 0
48. West Virginia: 0
49. Rhode Island: 0
50. Idaho: 0