Many fret that politeness is an endangered concept in the 21st century when it appears that anger and even rage seem to be, well, all the rage.
Well, nothing may be more polite than the simple act of saying: “Thank you.” Being of a mind to encourage politeness, BetMaryland.com – you home for Maryland sports betting coverage – decided to look at which states across the United States are the most thankful.
Spoiler alert: Maryland does quite well, but, with all due respect, you have to read on to find out why.
It might be difficult to objectively measure and quantify the notion of thankfulness, but BetMaryland.com found two key statistics to help with the research. We used these measures to determine which places in America are most likely to deliver a gesture of thanks.
We combined two data points to develop a ranking of the 50 U.S. states from most to least thankful.
Tipping, of course, is an explicit and perhaps the most common expression of expressing thanks. We used data from the restaurant-associated website Toast.com showing the state ranking of highest average tip percentage to restaurants during 2022.
Then BetMaryland.com used Google Trend’s search interest in the phrase “thank you notes” over past 12 months.
If a state ranked high on either scale, it received a lower number. For instance, Delaware had the highest ranking for tipping which gave that state 1 point in that category (the lowest state got 50). The tipping ranking was combined with the “thank you note” ranking, then those numbers were divided by two to arrive at a combined average score.
Like in golf, a lower combined number was better.
Using the above ranking system, Maryland came out near the top of Most Thankful States. Actually, the Old Line State was No. 4 overall.
Here’s how.
For tipping, Maryland ranked No. 20 out of the 50 states. That’s better than average but not great.
However, for using thank you notes, Maryland ranked No. 3, which illustrated a more formal sense of expressing gratitude.
Maryland’s combined average score of 11.5 placed it fourth, behind only South Carolina at No. 1 and two nearby states tied for second, Delaware and Rhode Island.
The rest of the grateful Top 10 were, in order: No. 5, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania (tied); No. 7, Nebraska; No. 8, Massachusetts and Ohio (tied), and No. 10, Virginia.
Thanks for reading, and we’d also thank you to stick with us for our information on Maryland sports betting promos.
Author
Jeff Parker is an entertainment writer for BetMaryland.com. A writer for film, television and the internet, Jeff is a life long movie buff, with an actual Masters Degree in Popular Culture. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he works full time as documentary filmmaker and producer.
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