As the list of women linked to Tiger Woods continues to grow, we learn that Woods has a special preference for cocktail waitresses and entertainers.  He has surveyed only several women, but the Census has surveyed the entire country about their fields of employment.

A quick report using Social Explorer will tell you that there are 3,588,200 women in the food preparation and serving industries, and 1,181,782 in arts, design, entertainment, sports, and media occupations–which can be compared to Woods’ ratio of cocktail waitresses to adult entertainers.

Social Explorer can also help researchers (and aspiring philanderers) target certain industries geographically.

Woods and others curious where cocktail waitresses are located might be interested in looking up where the Accommodation and Food Services industries are popular.

Or exploring where the Arts, Entertainment and Recreation businesses are concentrated.

Click here to look up more information on industries of your choice.  Or, click here for more information on subscribing to get access to all of Social Explorer’s data over the years.

While many around the nation counted down to Santa’s arrival, Social Explorer stayed up late last week waiting for the midnight release of the 2009 American Community Survey data.

This data represents the last nationwide survey before the 2010, and offers the most current data on the nation.  In the New York Times article “Recession Slows Population Rise Across Sun Belt,” Damien Cave writes about the populations changes in different regions across the US.  One of the major implications of population shifts is the reallocation of congressional seats, particularly the declines in population among many northeastern and midwestern states.

In addition to supplying the data analysis for the article, Social Explorer’s Andrew Beveridge also commented in the article, stating that, “The population trends are obviously now being shaped by this economic decline. The places that have had a really big decline economically, the states hit most heavily by the real estate crisis, have certainly had a real decline of people showing up there.”

Our data elf reports that Santa Claus uses Social Explorer to help plan his Christmas Eve route.

Months before he finalizes his list of toys, he can look up how many housing units there are in the US according to the 2008 American Community Survey (129,060,383), and see which ones are occupied and which are vacant.

He has also uses the Religious Survey map to see which households will be celebrating Christmas.

The Naughty or Nice map is not yet available for public use, but anyone can subscribe to get access to all of Social Explorer’s features for their own research.

Just click here for more information (or tell Santa to put a subscription under your tree).

Remember, data always makes a great stocking stuffer!

After the past few weeks of the Tiger Woods affair, the golf star’s wife, Elin Nordegren may have become the most talked about Swede in America at the moment.

Aside from Nordegren living in Windermere, Florida, and the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show living somewhere in NYC, where do other Swedish born people live?

Social Explorer can show you–from the handful of foreign born Swedes in Nordegren’s neighborhood to the 49,724 across the US in 2000.

Map of Foreign Born Swedes in the US (Each dot represents 10 people.  Click on the map for more detail.)

Click here to explore maps of the total foreign born population and each group.

Social Explorer also lets you look at ancestry data for groups from Acadians to Yugoslavians.  See how different waves of immigrants settled across the US over time.

Map of Swedish Ancestry in the US (Each dot represents 50 people.  Click on the map for more detail.)

The media already covered the moment when Tiger Woods’ wife Elin Nordegren took off her wedding ring.

To add context, you can research rates of separation and divorce across the country with Social Explorer.

A quick report will tell you that nationwide divorce rates have increased from 3.3 percent in 1970 to 10.5 percent in 2006.

You can also drill down to a single census tract.  For example, you can look at the 9.8 percent divorce rate in the Lake Isleworth, Florida, a community where one new divorce may soon be added to the tally.

Click here to find out more about divorce across geographies, and subscribers can explore divorce rate maps and data across the decades.

This holiday season, see who’s celebrating what with Social Explorer.  In addition to 220 years of nationwide demographic data from the Census and the American Community Survey, Social Explorer lets you explore data on religious adherents nationwide from 1980 to 2000.

This data comes from the Religious Congregations and Membership Study (RCMS), which is the most complete census available on religion in the United States.

For instance, on this, the seventh night of Hanukkah, you can see who might be lighting their menorahs, and how the Jewish population has changed since 1990.  (In 1980, the survey’s coverage of the Jewish synagogues and other non-Christian religions was incomplete.)

According to the 1990 survey, there were 5,982,529 Jews in the U.S., representing 2.41 percent of religious adherents.  By 2000, the number of Jews increased to 6,141,325, but while the overall number of Jews increased, the proportion of Jewish religious adherents decreased to 2.18 percent.

Click here to start exploring data on 149 religions groups and denominations.

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.