Born in Staten Island, NY, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino spent his formative tanning and toning years in Manalapan, NJ.  Last summer, he joined the cast of MTV’s The Jersey Shore.

From flashing his abs to regaling housemates with dating strategies, “The Situation” likes to put it out there, but Social Explorer can teach you even more.  For this installment of The Jersey Shore Data Hookup, we’ll use reports to help you learn what’s behind the your favorite shirtless Jersey Shore cast member.

Median household income in Manalapan, NJ, is twice the national average, but at $82,876, it would afford only a couple of appearance fees with “The Situation.”   He is reported to earn over $5 million this year for the Jersey Shore, Dancing with the Stars, product endorsements and events.

Social Explorer created one table you’d think Mike might have designed himself—“Single Males to Females Ratio By Age Group.”  And looking at the data, a young, single Manalapan man might want to move.  There are 23% more single men than single women among 20-29 year olds (7% higher than nationwide) in his old stomping ground.  Seaside Heights, NJ, has a more favorable ratio for the single guy, but Miami Beach has even more single 20-29 year old men than women (35%).  (At least he’ll have more in common with fellow Miami Beach residents, where men are five times more likely to be in arts, design, entertainment, sports and media occupations than in Manalapan.)

From Manalapan to Seaside Heights to Miami Beach, “The Situation” needs a little luck and a little data to improve his game.

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen this month, President Obama will announce the US’s plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

Did you know that you can map pollution using Social Explorer? In addition to 220 years of Census and American Community Survey data, Social Explorer has additional datasets from particular projects, including carbon emissions data.

This data comes from a collaboration with the Vulcan Project, a NASA/Department of Energy funded effort based at Purdue University.  The Vulcan Project has quantified US fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at space and time scales much finer than has been achieved in the past.

Social Explorer users can explore carbon emissions data for 2002 here.  Take a look at maps of the whole country and your own town to learn more about the distribution of emissions while the policy debates continue.

A federal district court ruling will compel Westchester County to address housing segregation.  Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge provided expert testimony for reports and depositions.

As stated in the New York Times article covering the case, Beveridge found that, “racial isolation is increasing for blacks, falling slightly for whites” and that “income level has very little impact on the degree of residential racial segregation experienced by African-Americans.”

Sam Roberts wrote that, “Judge Cote concluded that Westchester had made little or no effort to find out where low-income housing was being placed, or to finance homes and apartments in communities that opposed affordable housing.”

According to the settlement, Westchester County will have to create 750 units of affordable housing in the next seven years, at least 630 of which will have to be in the most segregated neighborhoods of the county.

For more information on the case and Beveridge’s testimony, please visit the Anti-Discrimination Center.

While news channels broadcast from the front door of Michael Jackson’s childhood home and the gate to the Neverland Ranch, Social Explorer lets you look around the neighborhood, and see who was living near Michael.

Indiana to California:

Born in 1958, Jackson spent his early years in Gary, Indiana. Living at 2300 Jackson Street (named after the former president, not his own family), he was raised in a suburb of Chicago. His father worked in the steel industry, a more robust sector at the time. The Jackson household had 11 members, making it larger than 90 percent of neighboring families (and larger than Jon and Kate and Plus 8).

Slideshow: Gary, IN % Black 1960 — 2000 census tract:

(Click on the maps to interact.)

After building up a following in the Midwest, Jackson and his family first moved to Los Angeles in 1968 with Motown Records. That year, the Jackson Five performed at Jack Hanson’s elite Beverly Hills nightclub the Daisy. The concert helped launch them onto the national record industry scene, and in 1969, Motown released their debut album “Diana Ross Presents the Jackson Five.”

Race and Space:

It may not matter if you’re black or white, when looking at demographics, it might. It is worth noting that Jackson has lived in communities of both homogenous extremes. His hometown in Gary was 99.4 percent black in 1960, and remains highly segregated today (97.8 percent black according to the 2000 Census). In California, Jackson lived in communities with a radically different racial makeup.

The Jackson family compound at 4641 Havenhurst Ave., Encino, California, is in a neighborhood with a black population that has been at or below one percent from 1980 to the present. Meanwhile, the Neverland Ranch at 5225 Figueroa Mountain Rd., Los Olivos, CA, is in a community that has been less than 1 percent black since Jackson first bought the property in 1987. (You can check these and other indicators for yourself. Just go to Social Explorer and click on “maps,” and then try out the various addresses.)

In addition to a shift in racial diversity, the housing and density are completely different between Gary and Los Angeles. Public about his anxieties being surrounded by lots of people, Jackson moved from Gary where nearly 11,000 people shared one square mile of land, to Los Olivos, CA, where the population density remains less than 30 people per square mile.

(Click on the map to interact.)

Latest Home:

After courtroom controversies and years of living in Bahrain, Dubai and Ireland, Jackson moved to 100 North Carolwood Dr., in Holmby Hills, CA, earlier this year.

The $100,000 monthly rent of his mansion could have bought him three homes in Gary, Indiana, where the median home value is $37,100 (a figure that is low for both the county and the nation).

Back in the land of million-dollar-mansions (the median home value for the Holmby Hills area) and just miles away from his breakthrough Beverly Hills concert, Jackson was rehearsing for what could have been another pivotal concert in his career.

All data and demographic references are from Social Explorer maps and reports.

Additional Sources:

LA Times Obituary

NY Times Obituary

NY Times Article “Tricky Steps from Boy to Superstar”

Social Explorer was cited by the New York Times on a graphic piece that appeared on the front page of The New York Times website today.

To view Visit: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/10/us/20090310-immigration-explorer.html?hp

We have added a new feature to export Social Explorer slide shows to Microsoft PowerPoint.

Here is how it’s done:

Fist, you must be logged in either directly or by IP range.
1. click File->New Slide show
2. add a few slides
3. click File->Export to PowerPoint
4. set presentation title then click OK
5. wait while our system produces the slide show.

fig 1. Creating and exporting a slide show to PowerPoint.

fig 2. Enter presentation title and click OK to export.

fig 3. Save or Open the PowerPoint presentation.

Now that you have your presentation in PowerPoint, you can set slide transition property to move to next slide every x seconds. In fig. 4, I set the presentation to move to next slide every second, thereby animating the slide show. This works really well when you have maps over time. For example, you can show how U.S. grew from 1790 to 2000.

fig 4. Set Advance slide property to all slides in the presentation. This will automatically move to next slide every x seconds when the presentation is running.

Sample Presentation: Download 1790-2000 Population Density