States' Average Woodie rankings

I demand a recount--- or a re-average. I find it hard to believe that PA's average ranking is 112 when there were only, what 160-170 coasters in the whole poll.

Now, I wasn't motivated enough to look for the poll results again. But even if there are some lousy coasters across the state, the high rankings I seem to remember for Phoenix, LR (both trains) and the decent rankings for Twister, Wildcat, and the Kennywood coasters couldn't be offset that much to put the state as a whole in 45th place-- out of our "current" 51 states.

We may just have to appeal to the CSCE and the European Union and set up a tent city in front of Chocolate World-- when it gets warmer of course.

Hmm just ran the numbers myself, and my way only seems to prop up the states that have a bunch of wooden coasters.

The top 5 states were:

Pennsylvania 4.84

Idaho 6.75

Indiana 8.92

Ohio 8.95

Florida 10.40

While the bottom 5 were

Minnesota 128

Utah 119

Kansas 107

Arkansas 81

West Virginia 79

Time to find a different way :-/

The stat was "States' Average Woodie rankings", it didn't neccessarily intend to pinpoint the best state for woodies. Anyway, that top 5 looks pretty good, except for Florida. Where did Texas come out in your modifications?

Texas came out 12th after the above mentioned and Missouri, New York, California, Wisconsin, Georgia, and New Mexico.

Not sure where the first poster's numbers came from, but I got much different averages when working out the numbers, i.e. 87.7 for PA. A state with a few good woodies is still going to get the better score, but those original numbers seem suspect.

Going to use my Excel skills real quick here and I'll post the results.

Also there is a statistical technique to normalize the averages of different samples with different sample sizes, but I don't remember it offhand. That would give you a much more "balanced" overview.

I did something like this last year (when I was unemployed and bored senseless) to rank parks based on their steel coaster rankings in Mitch's poll. The rankings skew toward the extremes (parks with a few good rides or parks with a lot of bad rides). For instance, Sea World Orlando came up #1... with only one ride, and Hersheypark came up near the bottom (a boomerang and mine ride will drop your average mightily).

There needs to be some way of weighting the averages. Like having a point system where you add points for each additional ride.

Ok, using only US states, the top 10 are: (pretty much same as Bill's post, only with Idaho thrown in)

1. Idaho 12.5
2. New Mexico 22
3. Maine 28
4. Louisiana 30
5. Indiana 43
6. Tennessee
Maryland 48.5 (tie)
8. Missouri 50.75
9. Florida 56.75
10. Connecticut 57

If you let all countries/provinces in as Mitch classifies them, Sweden would take 1st with a score of 7, British Columbia would take 3rd with 15, Belgium would come in at 7th with 33, and Norway would take 9th with 46.

The bottom 10 are: (worst listed first)

1. West Virginia 155
2. Minnesota 130
3. North Carolina 122
4. Utah 116
5. Ohio 113.7692
6. Illinois 107.3333
7. Virginia 106.75
8. Oklahoma 106.5
9. Iowa 106.25
10. Kansas 104

Adding in other countries/provinces.

1. West Virginia
2. Italy 149
3. Ontario 133.33
4. Brazil 132
5. Australia 131.33
6. Austria 130
7. Minnesota
8. North Carolina
9. Hungary 119
10.Utah

Since I don't want states burning any woodies to improve their rankings (with a few exceptions), I think we should rank them by quantity.

Pennsylvania 16
Ohio 12
California 7
New York 7
Wisconsin 6
Indiana 5
Georgia 4
Iowa 4
Missouri 4
Texas 4
Virginia 4
Florida 3
Illinois 3
Kentucky 3
Michigan 3
New Jersey 3
North Carolina 3
Alabama 2
Colorado 2
Connecticut 2
Idaho 2
Maryland 2
Massachusetts 2
Oklahoma 2
South Carolina 2
Tennessee 2
Washington 2
West Virginia 2
Arkansas 1
Louisiana 1
Maine 1
Minnesota 1
New Hampshire 1
New Mexico 1
Utah 1

And I am not even going to mention the states with 0. Anything less than 5 is just sad. There are some states that need to get the lead out.

11 years ago Indiana had 0 wooden coasters. Wow, how far we have come. I'm still in disbelief sometimes when I walk onto the suspension bridge over Lake Shafer. *** Edited 1/28/2005 3:51:32 AM UTC by Wabash Cannonball***

Anything less than 5 is just sad? So I guess all of us who live in the 44 states that don't have 5 woodies are living in states of pity huh? I'd rather have a state like mine where we have four pretty good woodies than a couple of great ones and some poor ones mixed in. Actually, just a couple of great ones are fine by me. ;)

Quality kicks Quantity's butt any day.

Well, Moosh....I did speak for myself, but this still doesn't prove a thing. This is the most unreliable, unmathematical predictor of a poll...and the thing is, you stated that yourself. It doesn't prove anything but how much time we have on our hands, how much snow is on the ground and the fact that YOU get to ride whenever you'd like. : (

Mathematically, if NM has two coasters and they are both decent then, of course, they are going to be at the top of a list. Indiana better be up there because they have 5 woodies all in the top. Idaho is KING then?? PA? C'mon, interesting? Uhm....more like insignificant. Yawn.

Well the next logical step for someone who is extremely bored is to create a new category: Wood coaster density, aka square miles per woody.

Then that might keep people from trashing coasters they've never ridden in states they've never been in.

Or someone with some real time on their hands could figure out the wooden coasters per capita. The 'anything less than 5' thing doesn't really fly, when you compare Iowa's population to...Texas's.

Poor Iowa- we have only four woodies and none of them are actually bad, they're actually pretty darn good. Oh well. I don't care- we've got two good theme parks and three awesome woodies.

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rollergator said:edited for Swoosh: Yes, MO does deserve a high ranking too, good wood in various locations. WoF does need to do better maintenance though, LOL...

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Bill - I see how it is ;) Yes MO has some great wooden coasters, especially since they retracked Eagle and Boss. If only WOF would retrack TWolf the state would be ranked even higher.

Indiana is still the best woodie state in my book. Between HW and IB, how can you go wrong

TWolf is in my top ten as is...it would be insane if they retracked it and could remove the trim. Ride op there told me that it was hitting the end breaks too hard so they had to trim it on the first hill. Maybe they could move that trim to right before the end breaks.

If you want a good ride...go in the rain and ride the first seat. You won't want to ride anything else.

As for best woodie state...look for WI to make a strong case for number one next season. ;) *** Edited 1/30/2005 5:29:26 AM UTC by RavenTTD***

From my judgement, Indiana is probably number 1, with PA, Ohio, New York, Wiscosin and my dear Georgia near there.

Some of Pa's woodies may be clunkers, but they all are segnifigant! (sp. sorry)

I'm suprised that MD. ranked rather high on your list(49) considering they've only got two woodies in the entire state,one good & one that's not as good(not bad mind you but getting there in a hurry).

At least the "good wood" happens to be John miller's 1917 classic,while the "less than good wood" is a more recent addition that's going into it's 7th season in a couple of months.

Hi UBRhino.I like TwisterII alot too.However, I just think that they made a big mistake by leaving Twister and Wildcat at the old site to be demolished.I think the first Twister was better than TwisterII.I definely don't think Twister II is as bad as some people say.Most days it still has a line as long as (if not longer than) some of the steel coasters.