From Pizzas To Roaches, Offbeat Inquiries Aimed At UF Statistic Workers

February 3, 1999

GAINESVILLE —Offbeat questions are nothing new when the folks at the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research pick up the phone.

How many pizzas are produced in Florida in a calendar year? How many roaches are collected by pest control companies? Where was the largest sea turtle ever found?

“We don’t have the answer to everything,” said Susan Floyd, editor of an annual reference volume that has served researchers, decision-makers and curiosity-seekers for more than three decades. “But we have a pretty good variety of statistics in the book.”

The Florida Statistical Abstract is the largest collection of data on Florida and its 67 counties. Its charts, maps and statistical tables provide information on dozens of state topics, including population, housing, education and tourism. The 1998 edition, released this week and containing more than 800 pages, expands on this coverage with new categories and updated figures.

This year’s new categories include numbers for people moving to and from Florida for every state, and a statewide estimate for the homeless (55,153 in 1996-97).

“We also thought it would be interesting to show people the numbers of homeless in their area (of the state),” Floyd said. “Maybe the problem is not as bad as they think it is and maybe it’s worse. That’s up to them to determine.”

Another new category is telephone company revenues, including the amount generated from pay phones. “You can get an idea of how many people still use pay phones in this day and age of cell phones,” she said, noting that the bureau hopes to include statistics on cell phones and pagers in next year’s edition.

Other additions are new tables on voting patterns, school-age populations and Medicare hospital insurance enrollment by county.

Under existing categories, Florida’s lottery sales, crime rate and proportion of students graduating from high school all declined last year, the new volume shows. Some figures:

• The state’s overall crime rate dropped by 11 percent between 1993 and 1997.
• Forty-three percent of Florida public school students were eligible for the free and reduced-price school lunch program in 1997-98.
• Lottery sales fell slightly more than 1 percent between 1996 and 1997.
• High school dropout rates statewide increased by nearly 12 percent between the 1992-93 and 1996-97 school years.
• In 1996-97, 25,930 children were home-schooled statewide.

“Probably the most exciting thing that happened this year is we’ve put it on CD-ROM and are now offering that to the public,” said Floyd, who also is coordinator for information and publications with BEBR.
The abstract is one of many publications the bureau provides. Others are state and county economic forecasts, monthly consumer confidence surveys and Florida population estimates between national census reports.

Retailers, bankers, journalists, county planners and a variety of other information seekers use the abstract, said Floyd, who has worked on the publication for more than 20 years.

Although the subjects people inquire about may seem trivial, they always are of serious importance to the caller, Floyd said. For instance, the person who asked about the number of pizzas produced in the state happened to work for a pizza company that was considering expanding into Florida.

Floyd didn’t have the information so she referred the caller to a state agency that licenses hotels and restaurants. But if the bureau receives a flurry of inquiries about pizzas, it might show up as a new category in a future abstract, she said.

“One of the better examples of that was back in the 70s during the gas crisis,” she said. “People were calling all the time to ask how many gallons of gas were sold. So we beefed up our energy section.”