Washington D.C.

By The Numbers: Women’s March 2018

Women's March 2018 (Yahoo)

Women’s March 2018 (Yahoo)

Did you go to a Women’s March this past weekend? I went to the one in LA, and had a great time! It was wonderful being surrounded by so many positive people interested in change.

I was curious to see if there were any numbers on how many people marched this year. It does make sense that turnout would be lower this year than last year, which saw around 3M people around the country. It has been noted that year-over-year attendance in major cities decreased, while those in surrounding areas actually increased due to protestors opting to attend marches closer to home.

While it was difficult to estimate because some cities had marches spread out over the weekend and some cities didn’t have estimates, other cities still reported numbers:

  • Los Angeles: 500K
  • New York City: 200K+
  • San Diego: 37K
  • Washington, DC: 10K
  • Raleigh, NC: 1K+
  • Casper, Wyoming: 350

Hit the links to read more about the numbers. Can’t wait to march next year!

Bus Permits for the Women’s March Outnumber Bus Permits for the Inauguration by a 1:6 Ratio

Women's Strike For Peace And Equality March, 1970 (Time)

Women’s Strike for Peace-And Equality, Women’s Strike for Equality, Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, August 26, 1970. (Photo by Eugene Gordon/The New York Historical Society/Getty Images)Women’s Strike For Peace And Equality March, 1970 (Time)

Friday, January 20th is Inauguration Day for the president-elect. The Women’s March takes place the next day. (Who’s going? I am!) D.C. can already tell the event is sure to be huge, judging by the number of bus permits secured. And the March might overshadow the previous day’s activities.

According to D.C. Council member Charles Allen, 1,200 buses have secured parking permits for the day of the March in RFK Stadium. (RFK Stadium has a capacity of 1,300 buses.) By contrast, just 200 buses have registered for parking permits for Inauguration Day. For every bus that has registered for the inauguration, six buses have registered for the March.

For President Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2009, 3K buses registered for permits. Bus registrations for the current president-elect comprised 6.67% of that total.

Attendees for the March are expected to number as many as 200K.

Hopefully, this detail begins getting the message to the president-elect loud and clear that we will not be ignored.

 

 

Female Condoms’ Failure Rate Over Long-Term Use

Female Condom demonstrator

Female Condom demonstrator

It seems like everyone is talking about female condoms lately. Maybe your friend has just tried it, or someone else swears by them, but mainstream awareness of the contraceptive measure seems to be growing by the day.

One thing that’s on everybody’s mind: its failure rate.

The Guttmacher Institute (headquartered in New York and Washington D.C.) is way ahead of the curve on this one, having done a female condom usage study on this back in 2005 (almost a decade ago!). From 1995-1998, they observed 869 women ages 18-35 within 2 STI clinics. The control group received only male condoms to use, while the variable group got both female condoms and male condoms as a back-up measure. The women were educated on female condom use. Prior to the study, only three women had used a female condom, and 95% practiced inserting it at the clinic.

The study found that 11% of female condoms slipped out at first use, while declined to less than 1% when used over 15 times. Overall, 3% of all female condoms slipped out, out of 7K+ female condoms used.

For comparison, 7% of male condoms broke when used for the first time, and declined to 2% when used over 15 times. Three percent of male condoms overall broke during use, out of 12K+ male condoms used.

I couldn’t find any studies on female condom use over the long-term from more recent times (within the past five years or so), so it’ll be interesting to see whether the new cultural awareness of the method will result in more people using female condoms more frequently.

 

Google Trends: “Halloween Costumes” vs. “Sexy Halloween Costumes”

Sexy Elsa 'Frozen' Costume

Sexy Elsa ‘Frozen’ Costume

In celebration of Halloween being my favorite holiday, I’ll be crunching some data about it in the upcoming days. Enjoy!

 

With Halloween coming up on Friday (!!!), I was curious about how the recent Google searches reflected the all-important costume search. Google Trends to the rescue!

I searched “Halloween costumes” (blue line) against “sexy Halloween costumes” (red line) for the U.S. during the past 30 days (Sept. 27-Oct. 27, 2014), with the following results:

Google Trends: 'Halloween Costumes' vs. 'Sexy Halloween Costumes'

Google Trends: ‘Halloween Costumes’ vs. ‘Sexy Halloween Costumes’

Unsurprisingly, the search for sexy Halloween costumes, while small, still made an impression. But I would’ve predicted it would’ve been a fair bit larger.

Now, the fun part! Let’s look at each of these searches by subregion (in this case, state), metro and city.

 

“Halloween Costumes” by Subregion:

'Halloween Costumes' by Subregion

‘Halloween Costumes’ by Subregion

States with larger populations make a strong showing here: Wyoming, West Virginia, North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota descend from 100% to 86%. Notable conservative state Utah appears at 78%.

 “Halloween Costumes” by Metro:

'Halloween Costumes' by Metro

‘Halloween Costumes’ by Metro

Pennsylvania areas Wilkes Barre-Scranton (100%) and Pittsburgh (92%) take the top two spots. Salt Lake City reappears with 87%. New York takes up two consecutive entries with Albany-Schenectady-Troy with 85%, and Buffalo with 83%.

 “Halloween Costumes” by City:

'Halloween Costumes' by City

‘Halloween Costumes’ by City

Here we have something I haven’t seen before: a tie! Westland, Michigan and Omaha, Nebraska both sit at the top with 100%.

Other points of interest: Major US cities make the list further down. Los Angeles clocks in at #8 with 82%, and Washington, D.C. appears next with 81%. Also the first non-Lower 48 city appeared at #10: Honolulu with 81%.

 

“Sexy Halloween Costumes” by Subregion:

'Sexy Halloween Costumes' by Subregion

‘Sexy Halloween Costumes’ by Subregion

Third most-populous state New York sets the pace at 100%. (Most-populated state California enters the race halfway down the list at #5 with 88%.) Michigan and Florida tie with 92%, with Pennsylvania hot on their heels at 91%. Second-most populated state Texas clocks in at #9 with 79%.

“Sexy Halloween Costumes” by Metro:

'Sexy Halloween Costumes' by Metro

‘Sexy Halloween Costumes’ by Metro

I’ve never seen this before: only one entry. It’s New York, the most-populated metro area. Clearly, everyone in the greater New York City area is searching for sexy Halloween costumes…right?

“Sexy Halloween Costumes” by City:

'Sexy Halloween Costumes' by City

‘Sexy Halloween Costumes’ by City

Interesting that the greater New York metro area is searching for sexy Halloween costumes more than the city’s residents themselves. But everyone in Los Angeles, the city proper, is Googling sexy costumes. Also of note is that all of these are very large cities (compared with the basic “Halloween costumes” search, which had smaller cities top the list).

 

Conclusions:

I didn’t expect this, but the “Halloween costumes” vs. “sexy Halloween costumes” searches tend to break down along urban/rural-ish lines. Those searching for “Halloween costumes” have tended to be from less-populated areas, whereas those Googling “sexy Halloween costumes” seem to be coming from more urban areas and making larger impacts.