An amazing number of statistics come from "windshield" surveys. That's where you drive across the country, count road-kill and then use the numbers to arrive at the population of dogs and cats; or possums, or ....
Best use of the windshield survey numbers is to look for trends. I know the American Veterinary Medicine Association has historic numbers since one of my consultants worked for AVMA and it was his job to amass them from surveys he designed and ran. So if you have access to the AVMA you have a base from which to start. If you look at the number of vets who are in small animal practice you see that they are there because that's where the growth is. (Not much future in being a horse and cow doctor.) So you assume that there must either be growth in the number of small animals or they are being treated more frequently. Next you look at the ratio of homes to apartments and condos being built. Homes have dogs, most apartments and condos don't. People have 1.3 cats per household with cats, only 1.05 dogs per household with dogs, so you have multipliers to match with your statistics. Younger people replace a pet when they lose it or move, older people don't. The government population statistics give you a measure of the aging of America.
Putting this all together, you have an estimate of the dog and cat population and how it will change in the next ten years. On this basis I predict the dog population is declining about 0.9 per year whereas the cat population is increasing at a rate faster than the people population which is growing at about one percent/year.
It's easy to be deceived by numbers. The press and realtors hype new home sales and the move to the grass-growing suburbs but they simply don't have a feel for the real statistics. And the cluster of veterinarians about those prosperous new developments, spells sure disaster for some because there just aren't enough animals to support them.
NOTE: A misquote from Dave Barry, "The numbers must mean something because there's a decimal."
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The term windshield survey actually had its start in the corn belt. There a drive through the countryside gave an indication of crop growing conditions. That's important to a local merchant who must decide how much the farmers are going to be spending when the crops are harvested.
Of course seed companies also can get a pretty good idea of how their particular varieties were doing as well as the competitions.
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Best business school example of windshield surveys is counting oil spots.
Bill's Dollar Stores looks for oil spots in parking lots; makes the assumption that they are from old cars; old cars are driven by impoverished people; the poor prefer (or will) shop in low-end department stores. That's where BDS's market is so they lease space there.
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Another windshield survey is whether increasing the tax on cigarettes decreases the number of teen-age smokers. Now days, teens don't take a puff off the same cigarette, but they do take an offered one from a pack that someone has. So if you go to a popular spot where they hang out and pick up the butts left behind and make a count, you get a measure of whether there is, in fact more or less smokers. A chart of butts gathered against time will yield a plot of increase/decrease in smokers. (Cigarette sales are not acceptable as after-all, everyone knows that teens can't buy cigarettes.)
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Looking to buy a new home in an upscale neighborhood; just drive through the neighborhoods and look for cars parked on the grass. Or, look for service vehicles, a sure sign it's a working class neighborhood. (The old tale about a rich Georgia boy is that he has not one but two cars up on blocks in his driveway, has a ring of truth in it.)
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Want to know when the snow-birds have returned to Florida? Look for an increase in the number of traffic accidents in an area.
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Watching what people load on the moving belt in the checkout lane at the grocery store will give you a good index on how dependent people are becoming on prepared foods, and what sort of family arrangement they have. You'll be surprised to discover that the growth market is in single moms. Of course scanners give the supermarket the same data, but sometimes the quantity of numbers and the inability to rationalize what they mean obscures the information you need.
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How about a measure of the increase in Latinos in the area? Roadside flowers where someone has been killed is a sure sign.
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There are few conventional methods that give a better estimate than those which are suggested above. And there are many-many more windshield surveys that can provide a basis for judgement or else, argument. Think about it.
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