Fun with Data (TKD tournament demographics in the USA)

[TrueJim]

I recently undertook the mission of cataloging as many "open" taekwondo tournaments (of any style) as I could find in the US. I have an Excel file of about 300 tournaments now that when you place on a map yields this:

Now of course we see some "huge tracts of land" where there are no tournaments, because of course very few people live in these tracts (deserts, the tops of mountains, etc.). Here I've highlighted some of the empty tracts:

But that got me to wondering, how does this map compare to a map of the population density of the U.S.? Are there really that few people in these empty tracts? So I grabbed a population density map and plopped my map on top of it as best as I could:

I think it's interesting that there are still some "bubbles" where we still have a relatively high population density, but no open tournaments (of any style). I've highlighted some bubbles here:

The big bubbles are places like:

• Spokane, Washington (top left)
• Boise, Idaho (top left)
• Amarillo and Lubbock, Texas (lower center)

...with smaller but still somewhat surprising (to me) bubbles in relatively high-density areas like:

• Shreveport, Louisiana (lower, and a bit to the right of center)
• Birmingham, Alabama (even more to the right)
• Cedar Rapids, Iowa (upper center)

Maybe these smaller bubbles are less surprising -- it wouldn't be that long a drive to a state capitol or other large city to attend a tournament. For example it's only a 2-hour drive from Cedar Rapids to Des Moines. But still, you'd think a place as big as Cedar Rapids (count pop = 211K) could host at least one tournament a year.


Of course it's possible that there are open tournaments in these places that I just haven't cataloged yet (despite my searching for them). It makes me wonder though if these are some locations in the U.S. that are under-served in terms of taekwondo -- maybe there aren't as many schools in these place, or maybe there's no schools large enough to host a tournament in these areas.


For anybody that wants to try to re-create my results ;-) my source data (so far) is here List of U.S. Taekwondo Tournaments - 2017 and List of U.S. Taekwondo Tournaments - 2018.

 

[CB Jones]

In Louisiana USKA is the predominate association. Lots of tournaments in Shreveport and north Louisiana.

It is open to all Karate, TKD, and Kung fu styles.

USKA have strong presence in Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and California

 

[CB Jones]

You are missing USKA, PKC, USKK, and AOK organizations. All of which are open karate/TKD tournaments.