The Politics Of Cruise Ships, And More!

Here at Data Services, when we ask a quantitative question about engine displacement, we often get a lot of questions about pump lift. We've been thinking about the political leanings of people on cruise ships lately. It's surprising. Many of you asked for answers.

We don't usually think of any mode of transportation as political. But someone directs our attention to a columnist calling out the Democrats' disdain for anyone who "goes on a cruise or an all-inclusive resort."

Hmm, is that true? Do cruise ships and all-inclusive resorts really appeal to a mostly Republican clientele?

We caught up with our YouGov friend Karl Bialik, who once wrote the (incredible) "Numbers" column for the Wall Street Journal. Late last year, YouGov asked 1,000 American adults (at least on cruise ships) this question to determine how the coronavirus pandemic has changed our behavior.

Bialik found that the partisan divide among researchers has not disappeared, as some analysts thought. When asked if they would have swam before the outbreak, 16% of Democrats and 20% of Republicans said yes. The margin of error for the poll is 3.5 percentage points, plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

In the year The data cut leading up to the 2020 presidential election resulted in a slightly wider gap, with 17 percent of Biden voters and 26 percent of Trump voters saying they had at some point before the pandemic traveled.

As you might expect, your chances of going on a cruise increase with age, as does your income. Regarding other characteristics of cruise passengers, whites (19%) are more likely than blacks or Hispanics (12% each), Southerners (20%) are more likely to cruise than Midwesterners (13%).

But there are signs that the Covid era has opened up new avenues for homeless guerrilla warfare. In 2020, a third (32%) of Trump voters said they would be "very comfortable" on a cruise right now, while only 11% of Biden voters said the same. Meanwhile, nearly half (48%) of Biden voters said the opposite — that they would actually be "too uncomfortable" to touch — more than double their concerns about Trump. Differences between regions and races were not that great.

So, is it cultural snobbery or caution against covid-induced segregation? You will recall that cruise ships played an important role in the early days of the corona virus outbreak. In the year

On its website, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to warn that Covid "is easily spread between people on airplanes." And it's not just Covid: More than 300 people recently contracted the suspected norovirus at the Ruby Princess Hotel, which made headlines in 2020 as a possible carrier of Covid.

Digging deeper into the survey results, we find support for the precautionary theory of Covid. Because cruise ships aren't the only concern of Biden voters. Other jobs that require public interaction are less contentious, but all point to growing partisan divisions.

Before the pandemic, Biden and Trump voters were about 50% more likely to attend the same concerts or fly on the same plane, for example. Now, Biden voters are about half as 'very comfortable' as Trump voters about concerts and air travel.

Although they were more likely to use public buses and subways before the coronavirus hit, Biden voters are less likely than Trump voters to use public transportation.

So while this appears to be a partisan divide in cruising, it appears to be a reflection of a broader partisanship about the need for constant vigilance against Covid rather than ignorance about large ships, on-board entertainment and 24-hour buffets. . .

Marriage between universities

We all know that theater professionals are a special breed. They seem to agree: According to a worldwide survey compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, people who major in drama or theater are more likely to marry than people who major in other music-related fields.

About 12 percent of theater or music majors marry people who studied the same subject, a fact that's even more impressive when you consider that it's a small group. Of the 72 major drama majors for which we have sufficient data for the past decade, they ranked 53rd, and music majors 33rd. Often, people of younger professions are less likely to marry on their own—perhaps because they have partners to choose from.

Less likely to join their own ranks, perhaps unsurprisingly, are family science and consumer science. About 1% of students in the specialization (formerly known as family economics) are married to other family economists. This makes sense since 92% of them are women and the majority of American marriages are heterosexual.

Special education majors are also dominated by one gender, meaning 88% are women. They are more likely to marry in their specialty (2%).

Drama and music students use 61% and 51.5% women respectively, with an equal gender balance in the marriage class. But since then, gender trends have changed, and that doesn't seem to explain the remaining breakdown of marriage among large companies.

Of course, we're only looking at married couples: if you're married, how likely is it that your spouse will be in the same room? Taking a broader look at marriage rates for major marriages, we find that music majors have lower than average marriage rates, and theater and theater majors are less likely to marry than other majors. Only filmmakers are ranked high.

A popular medical travel destination

When people get sick – for example with a life-threatening illness – they try to get the best possible care. And in the United States, that often means leaving home. A new analysis of 229 million health insurance claims shows that nearly a quarter of the medical care dollars we receive from doctors come from outside our hospital environment.

Rochester, Minnesota is green and quiet, home to the Mayo Clinic, arguably the best medical center in the country. It is the only state in the US that generates twice as much Medicare as it spends domestically.

But mid-sized Rochester is an exception. A new analysis by University of Chicago economists Jonathan Dingle, Joshua Gottlieb, Maya Lozinski and Pauline Muro calculates which areas medical travelers visit for medical care and where they pass through, with large cities the most frequent. They want hospitals..

According to their analysis, while Medicare heavyweight Phoenix has the highest quality hospitals, Los Angeles, the nation's largest hospital referral area, is second. Their calculations show that a person would be willing to travel three times longer to get to a Los Angeles hospital than to go to a Los Angeles hospital.

Like Los Angeles, top-performing hospitals tend to be in referral areas with high Medicare patient populations, so the opportunities for skill development are endless. (Hospital referral areas are similar to metropolitan areas but include remote rural areas. Boundaries are determined by health care markets, not travel and demographics.)

There is no reason for Medicare doctors to compete on cost because public senior insurance programs pay all providers the same amount (this data comes from traditional Medicare, not Medicare Advantage). Therefore, they must compete in service convenience and quality, write the authors. As a result, the places with the most potential patients will have the best providers who work especially hard for the organization, especially when it comes to more specialized institutions.

"Even when prices are fixed, competition can work," Gottlieb told us. "Bigger markets can produce more efficiently, and competition for patients forces them to convert that efficiency into quality that patients want."

"The benefits of this measure are enough to be shared by patients who travel for treatment outside their home market," he said. "Medicare patients can travel across the country to get the care they need."

Medicare patients are more likely to travel for cancer and cardiovascular care, the largest of the 21 highest spending categories. But weight to maintain balance, problems that push to travel in terms of their distribution are born, this category includes problems at birth, especially heart and nervous system disorders.

But cancer is second. Cancer is so expensive, so common and so serious that it accounts for a fifth of all medical expenses outside of your home hospital setting. In 2017, almost half of people with eye cancer had to travel, and we have data for this. They are also often used for sarcomas, cancer of the pharynx and fallopian tubes.

Travel is also common in mental and behavioral disorders, especially eating disorders and drug-related conditions.

good morning! The data department wants to know what you think. When was the highest number of workhorses in the US? Which US road has the highest average speed? At the current rate of jersey shortages, when will the major sports leagues run out of jersey numbers? You just have to ask!

If your request asks you to create a column, we will send you a Data Department badge and official ID. To receive all the questions, answers and facts in your mailbox immediately after publication, register here . This week's buttons go to Meg Friedman of New Haven, Connecticut, who asked about the difference in quality of medical care between metros, as well as Marilyn Berner of Venice, Florida, Jean Mora of Falls Church, Virginia, and Sandra Dumas of Silver Spring , who asked about cruises. Maryland