My reason for choosing this particular map of America is because it is a widely associated fact that, despite the many different cultures of faith that make up the United States, there are, according to sources, over 224 million christians that make up 85% of the the total population of America. I therefore find it interesting to find that some states teach the theory of evolution to a greater extent than others, if at all.
It was established by Lawrence S. Lerner of California State University at Long Beach, and was first used in 2002, however the date of collection has not been given, therefore I do not feel this source is trustworthy enough to draw hard conclusions from. However, we can say that it gives us at least a representation of how previous trends have displayed attitudes towards the theory of evolution in education. I think that we can gather that if the readings from this map were collected recently, ie. within the last year, it shows that the majority of states now accept at least a satisfactory level of coverage for the topic.
When it comes to some of the states that teach a "lower standard" of the evolution theory, these can be cross-referenced with the results of two surveys that were taken looking at the most christian states in America, in accordance with both adherent and affiliated members taken in 1990.
Christianity survey: http://christianity.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=christianity&cdn=religion&tm=152&f=00&tt=11&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.adherents.com/largecom/com_christian.html
Whilst the majority of states displayed in the top ten are also displayed in red on the map, there are a few namely Louisiana, South Dakota and Minnesota that appear to have a good standard of education for the subject which stood out for me as unusual because of the number of christians reportedly living in those states.
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