At the least it might be a decent metric for where teams have good potential to start. Here is some Upper Midwest (and surroundings) FRC data (FTC/VEX does not have a large presence in the Upper Midwest to my knowledge):
# of high schools taken from
here and population from 14-17 year olds in 2010 census estimates (
here) (which should be the same metrics as Ed's).
North Dakota: 5 teams, 177 high schools, 36,059 people
138.7 teams/M people
0.028 teams/high school
South Dakota: 0 teams, 198 high schools, 42,612 people
0 teams/M people
0 teams/high school
Nebraska: 0 teams, 328 high schools, 96,724 people
0 teams/M people
0 teams/high school
Missouri: 52 teams, 615 high schools, 316,255 people
164.4 teams/M people
0.085 teams/high school
Iowa: 3 teams, 391 high schools, 163,257 people
18.4 teams/M people
0.008 teams/high school
Minnesota: 81 teams, 756 high schools, 284,312 people
284.9 teams/M people
0.107 teams/high school
Wisconsin: 29 teams, 578 high schools, 298,927 people
97.0 teams/M people
0.050 teams/high school
Illinois: 46 teams, 869 high schools, 703,099 people
65.4 teams/M people
0.053 teams/high school
Indiana: 30 teams, 384 high schools, 364,770 people
82.2 teams/M people
0.078 teams/high school
Disclaimer: I am a little suspect of the high school count for Minnesota as it seems quite high.
Observations/questions:
Are areas without cities of 100K (rough approximation) really going to have difficulty with FRC teams?
Obviously, looking at Nebraska, Iowa, and South Dakota one might think this is the case. I happen to know that all three teams in Iowa are near larger cities (or universities). At the same time though the largest city in North Dakota that has a team is Minot which is under 40K people.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a few cities in NE, IA, and SD that would be able to have teams (Lincoln, NE, Omaha/Council Bluffs, NE/IA, Des Moines, IA, Sioux City, IA, Sioux Falls, SD, and maybe Rapid City, SD (SD school of mines is there)) from a population standpoint. A question then arises of a lack of teams in the area for each of them and longer drives to regionals (probably around 4 for all of them to the closest regional).
For schools outside of these larger cities, the challenges would seem to go beyond that to major difficulties in fund raising (yes, I know it is a challenge for most teams, but it would seem to be even more the case when the number of potential sources of funds is smaller).
In addition, there is the difficulty of people. Example: my mother and father went to high schools of around 20-30 people in each graduating class in rural South Dakota (they played 9-man football). Everyone was in the major sports because there was one coach. Now, this was close to thirty years ago, but numbers haven't changed that much in those areas. I would be interested to hear from teams that have less than 50 people in their school to understand how it works. I already know that small numbers of people on the team can be difficult as I mentor a team with 6 students (it is 4-H and mostly home schooled students so the pressures are different).
In addition to the lack of students, can teams in those regions easily overcome a shortage of mentors? I know a lot of schools have cut industrial technology when faced with budget cuts. Again, I would be interested in knowing from those teams that are not near a larger city to draw people from industry (and yes, I do realize that farmers often have a lot of technical know-how even if not trained in an educational setting beyond high school industrial technology and on-the-job with a parent or neighbor, so that might be the solution).
In this context, the growth in Minnesota over the last few years is all the more amazing as I would guess it is one of the highest teams/M ratios around.