Where Musicians Live

I was once looking around for demographics information about musicians, and I encountered this map, entitled "Which City Has the Most Musicians?"

At first glance, I thought the map was intriguing, and I started exploring it and wondering why musicians lived in certain places and not others. But then I suddenly realized that the map might not be as interesting as it first appears.

When someone shows you a statistic or a chart of data, it's always a good to think of some good "compared-to-what" questions. That's how one can start to tell if the statistic or chart is really telling us something new. In this case, it occurred to me that it would be useful to compare the chart with one showing where other people live.

So, I found the image on the right, below, on the US Census Bureau website. It is entitled "2020 Population Distribution in the United States and Puerto Rico." (Click on the image to go to the page and see the full size image.) The bright spots have lots of people, and the dark areas have few people.

If you compare the dark spots on the left with the bright spots on the right, you may come to the following startling conclusion: