There is nothing better for your mental health than getting away from it all. Losing connectivity with everything to just ‘be’ in the middle of nowhere. But how do you find the Middle of Nowhere? Well, a mapper out of Portland, Oregon has that covered for you. Seth Kadish is what you would call a visual statistics artist. The Portland, Oregon-based Kadish has created a guide that has pinpointed BFE.
He’s basically built his visual aid off road-less areas. The less roads, the less access to other people, the more in the middle of nowhere you are. Not surprisingly, the western mountain states are the easiest places to find yourself all alone. As you can see from the map, the orange spaces are completely out there with Idaho, the state with the most road-less area in the Lower 48, dominating the ‘Middle of Nowhere’ competition. Notice how little ‘out there’ is left on the Eastern Seaboard.
Kadish also created a map based on the proximity to airports. “By air, the regions where you wouldn’t want to need to make an emergency landing are mostly in Nevada and Wyoming,” he said. “With a bit of nowhere sprinkled across the other mountain States. Again, Maine has a bit of nowhere, but it would be somewhere if Canadian airports were considered.”
Kadish, who works for Wired and Reddit, obviously has a passion for stats. And helping people understand them. “Showing someone a data table, or a correlation coefficient, or a p-value may or may not be meaningful,” he told us. “(But) what’s wonderful about data visualization is that it transforms what would be dense or boring to many into an engaging, accessible feature. A successful visualization can catch the eye, reveal hidden trends, and capture the essence of the data. I love analytics, but I also have a profound appreciation for the aesthetic aspect.”
And helping us understand where nowhere actually is. Which is really important if you love getting out there.
See more of Kadish’s excellent graphic work, mapping everything from pet adoption to more serious subjects like cases of college campus sexual assault.
