Can you name the largest U.S. cities nearer to another state capital than to their own? by zifyoip

Can you name the largest U.S. cities nearer to another state capital than to their own?

created by zifyoip

Enter a city in the box below
Correctly named cities will show up below
Answers do not have to be guessed in order
Distances are measured along a great circle from city hall to state capitol building. Populations are the 2009 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Source: Google Earth
This quiz has not been verified by Sporcle

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Population and rank	City	Nearest state capital
8,391,881 (1st)
3,831,868 (2nd)
2,851,268 (3rd)
1,547,297 (6th)
1,306,301 (8th)
709,441 (18th)
676,640 (19th)
620,447 (22nd)
567,641 (28th)
482,299 (35th)
462,604 (38th)
356,587 (52nd)
340,340 (55th)
337,896 (56th)

Population and rank	City	Nearest state capital
333,013 (57th)
316,238 (60th)
311,647 (61st)
297,859 (62nd)
273,611 (69th)
270,240 (70th)
256,445 (71st)
225,856 (87th)
224,387 (89th)
223,738 (90th)
222,013 (92nd)
217,483 (95th)
209,716 (97th)
1,299,543 (9th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
727,575 (17th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
599,657 (27th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
479,921 (36th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
380,084 (49th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
372,186 (51st)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
324,463 (59th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
255,890 (72nd)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
207,294 (98th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
205,540 (101st)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
203,276 (104th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
201,162 (107th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
199,242 (109th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
198,410 (111th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
196,847 (113th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
194,343 (114th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
193,366 (116th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
193,171 (118th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
191,766 (120th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
190,414 (121st)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
189,389 (122nd)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
188,012 (123rd)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
187,535 (124th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
185,100 (125th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
182,421 (128th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
179,653 (129th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
172,945 (134th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
172,901 (135th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
171,809 (138th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
171,602 (139th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
171,349 (140th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
169,174 (141st)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
166,332 (142nd)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
165,809 (143rd)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
163,351 (144th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
157,935 (146th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
157,280 (149th)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)
155,575 (151st)	Phoenix, AZ (331 miles, versus 394 miles to Sacramento)

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U.S. cities near other states’ capitals Quiz

by zifyoip

Created Oct 3, 2010 in Geography
Game Plays 558

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	zifyoip:	Oct 4th, 2010 at 03:47 GMT	1 point
	Thanks to rbrt, who suggested the idea for this quiz in a comment on a similar quiz I made: http://www.sporcle.com/games/zifyoip/nearest_us_capital

	TheBigE1980:	Oct 4th, 2010 at 05:36 GMT	1 point
	Love the idea. I have to question a statistic though. Los Angeles' City Hall and the Arizona State Capitol have got to be farther apart than 350 miles. (I live in Phoenix and have done that drive several times.) Every measurement I've seen (and mileage sign on I-10) has them 370 miles or more apart. Downtown LA to downtown Sacramento is at least 380 miles according to directions I got from Google Maps.

	zifyoip:	Oct 4th, 2010 at 05:51 GMT	1 point
	You are right—the driving distance is probably greater than the distance shown in this quiz. The distances in this quiz are all straight-line, as-the-crow-flies distances. I just remeasured the distance between the tower of Los Angeles City Hall and the dome of the Arizona State Capitol; Google Earth says they're 355.82 miles apart.

	Onno:	Oct 4th, 2010 at 10:51 GMT	2 points
	Nice quiz. Loved the bonus answers, especially Sioux Falls. This is at least the second time that Dallas isn't an answer on a quiz, but some of it suburbs surprisingly are. Can't remember what the other quiz was though.

	dancastro:	Oct 4th, 2010 at 16:28 GMT	2 points
	Excellent quiz! What about making one for world cities and country capitals? I think a good format would be this: Hint, Munich (Germany). Nearest capital to be guessed: Vaduz (Liechtenstein). (I thought it would be Prague!) And in the third column you show that the distance Munich-Vaduz is shorter than Munich-Berlin. The population figures would be unnecessary (there's always someone who complains about being metro area or city proper).

	zifyoip:	Oct 4th, 2010 at 19:56 GMT	2 points
	@dancastro: So that's like this: http://www.sporcle.com/games/zifyoip/nearest_us_capital except with world cities? That's a good idea. Here's a small detail I'd have to figure out first: What point in these cities should I measure distances from? With U.S. cities, it's a pretty easy call, since most cities have a building called something like "City Hall." Is there an easy way to find the locations of equivalent buildings for world cities?

	dancastro:	Oct 5th, 2010 at 00:17 GMT	2 points
	@zifyoip: all world cities have a municipal building (city hall, hôtel de ville, ayuntamiento, Rathaus or whatever it's called), but... is that so important? You can simply pick a point near the center of each city and calculate the great circle distance with the measuring tool of Google Earth. Munich is at (about) 118 miles from Vaduz and at (about) 313 miles from Berlin. Is it so important if the exact distances are one or two miles more or less? (Simply avoid the cases where both values are nearly tied). To calculate distances I use Vincenty's formula (more precise than Google Earth's tool, as it takes into account the ellipsoidal shape of the Earth), but I'm exaggerating. These are games, not high precision geodetic surveys.

	zifyoip:	Oct 5th, 2010 at 01:10 GMT	3 points
	For a quiz like this one, accuracy is crucial. (Los Angeles is included in this quiz by a margin of 4.50 miles; Dallas is excluded by a margin of 10.39 miles; Sioux Falls, South Dakota, if it had a population large enough, would be excluded by only 0.06 miles.) For a quiz in the format that you suggest, it is perhaps not so important, but I'm familiar with the Sporcle crowd and I'd prefer to avoid arguments about the accuracy of my quiz data in the comments. (As you can see, I've already had a comment questioning the accuracy of my data in this quiz, despite my being very careful to precisely define which points I am using and how the measurement is taken!) I am interested in your comment that Google Earth's tool does not take into account the ellipsoidal shape of the earth—do you have something I can read about that? I was assuming that the formula used by Google Earth is based on some reasonably accurate ellipsoid model of the Earth; it would seem unduly sloppy for them to assume the Earth is a sphere.

	dancastro:	Oct 5th, 2010 at 12:56 GMT	3 points
	If you're looking for extreme precision, you can find Vincenty's formula at www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vincenty.html. You enter the latitude and longitude (deg/min/sec) of the points that you get from Google Earth and it calculates the distance. One second of latitude is about 30 meters or 100 feet, but you can even enter fractions of a second. I didn't mean that Google Earth's measuring tool assumes a spherical Earth (that would be too rude), but there are differences with Vincenty's. Examples: 1/4 of Equator, 10018.75 km (Vincenty), 10007.56 km (Google). 1/4 of meridian (Equator to pole), 10001.97 km (Vincenty), 9990.78 km (Google). I don't know if accuracy was improved in the latest versions of Google Earth.

	mr_parcheesi:	Nov 16th, 2010 at 15:24 GMT	1 point
	Spokane is closer to Helena than to Boise?

	zifyoip:	Nov 18th, 2010 at 21:21 GMT	2 points
	@mr_parcheesi: Yes. As the crow flies, Spokane to Helena is 265.10 miles; Spokane to Boise is 285.10 miles. Spokane to Olympia is 260.58 miles.

	acpdancer2014:	Jan 4th, 2011 at 00:57 GMT	1 point
	Hi. I like this quiz, but can you not do the thing with answers where they're hidden unless you guess them. Either put them in the quiz or don't. Thanks!

	zifyoip:	Jan 5th, 2011 at 22:28 GMT	1 point
	@acpdancer2014: I'm glad you like the quiz, but I'm not quite sure what you mean. Are you talking about the "Nearest state capital" column? I don't want that information to be available before the cities are guessed, because it pretty much gives the answers away; but I do want it to be included in the quiz, because it provides justification for the inclusion of each city. Or perhaps you are referring to the bonus answers? The bonus answers are included for cities that just missed being included, either because they are slightly closer to their own state capital than the nearest capital of another state, or because they don't quite have the population to make the list of the top 100 largest U.S. cities. Including them as bonuses provides justification for why they were not included in the quiz itself. Either way, the hidden information is here to provide a rationale for the selection of the cities in the quiz, to demonstrate that I wasn't just making stuff up.