In another life I may have been a cartographer

[Editor's note: I want to apologize for the unfortunate placement of some of the maps in this post. Perhaps the fact that they are .png files instead of .jpg files had something to do with it. When I tried to manipulate their size and placement the results were simply unacceptable. Just ignore the overlay effect if you can. It is more difficult to ignore the fact that photos in my sidebar obliterate portions of the maps altogether. I am truly sorry. --RWP]

I love maps.

For example, here's one that blogger Graham Edwards included in a post a few days ago. It shows response times in minutes for ambulance calls in England, Scotland, and Wales.

The map is fascinating and, one would presume, accurate. Woe to you, however, if you need an ambulance in the far north of England, most of Scotland, or certain parts of Wales.

Speaking of Graham Edwards, both he and blogger Yorkshire Pudding answered questions in a quiz at the website of The New York Times last week that claimed to be able to produce a map pinpointing one's origins based on word choices one selected in the quiz. Again, the results were fascinating. I decided to have a go at the American version. I hope you will agree that the results are fascinating.

The British Isles version included 96 questions to answer in order to pinpoint the origins of one's speech patterns. The U.S. version has only 25 questions. This seems somewhat backwards in my estimation. Considering that England is about the same size as Alabama, one would think that more questions would be required when covering a much larger amount of territory. Apparently I am wrong.

I took the test twice and Mrs. RWP took it once. The first time I took it I included multiple answers on questions that allowed multiple answers.

Another apology is in order. Since the maps were .png files, I was not able to include the overprint of cities that also were shown. I will name them for you instead.

Here is the map produced from my first (multiple answers) effort:

City names shown on that map were Providence (Rhode Island) and Birmingham (Alabama). Bingo! and also Not Bingo! as I spent the first six years of my life in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, right next-door to Providence. But I also spent 14 years in Texas (no mention), two years in Florida (no mention), three years in Nebraska (no mention), three years in New York (apparently the exception that proves the rule, though I was not in the part of New York most heavily shaded), six more years in Florida, and the last 44 years in Atlanta, Georgia. It is true that our daughter has lived in Birmingham, Alabama, for the past 26 years and we do visit her occasionally, but I have never lived there. So the map is exceedingly accurate in part and exceedingly inaccurate in many ways as well (for example, why California and Nevada showed up is anybody's guess). I do find it interesting that my mother's influence (she was from Philadelphia) is absent but my non-bio Dad's is present (he spent his entire youth and young adulthood in Wisconsin and Iowa).

I took the quiz a second time giving only a single answer to each question, including questions that allowed for multiple answers. The results were quite different:

This time the city shown was Atlanta (Georgia) but no indication at all of Providence or Birmingham. My mother's Philadelphia influence can be seen but my Dad's Wisonsin/Iowa influence cannot.

Finally, Mrs. RWP took the test. She was born in Philadelphia and moved to the Raleigh (North Carolina) area when she was 12. No mention was made of either of those places. Her results pinpointed Birmingham (Alabama) and Jackson (Mississippi). This may be fascinating but it is also just plain wrong.

My conclusion is that the test is fun, but it still needs a lot of work.

I'm sorry to have subjected you to all this. You probably don't find it nearly as fascinating as I do.

Now go out there and take the American version or the British version of the quiz yourself!