Cards Tourney

What is the Geographical Center of Euchre?

Partners playing a card game

Living in Cincinnati there is never a scarcity of people around who know how to play euchre. It lead me to the question, is Cincinnati the center of the euchre universe?

Over the past year, I've collected data on the Internet to test my hypothesis. Below is a visualization of my findings.

Map of the United States shaded by the number of euchre players in each state, with red pins for euchre tournaments found in 2013 and yellow pins for euchre app company headquarters. Michigan is the darkest state and has the most red pins.

Source: Facebook Advertiser Data

On December 5, 2013, I used Facebook's advertiser interface to compile rough counts of Euchre players in each US state. States that are a dense red had the highest number of people interested in Euchre.

Source: Google Alerts

Red Orange Pin In 2013, I created a record in a spreadsheet for every instance of a Google Alert finding a "Euchre Tournament." Above, you see a Red pin at the location of each of these records.

Source: iTunes Apps - Company Headquarters

Yellow Pin I happen to know that some iPhone app development companies, such as A Star Software, are headquartered here in Cincinnati, OH. So I wanted to chart where the 60+ Euchre apps were developed on the map. Unfortunately, most of the companies listed in iTunes do not have a link to their company website. More difficult still was finding their location on the website. Therefore, I've charted those companies I could find with a yellow pin.

Conclusions

I wouldn't read too much into the locations of the iTunes App Company Headquarters. A few of them are in the Midwest but most skew toward technology hubs. Instead, the other 2 data sources are extremely telling. Michigan has the most Facebook users and has had the most Euchre Tournaments show up on the Internet over the past year. Therefore, our winner for the Center of the Euchre Universe is... DETROIT, MICHIGAN!