I thought that business teachers would get enjoy getting students to guess the answer for their specific state. Also will teach an important lesson about the various ways to measure the size of corporations. Here is the infographic with the largest company in each state based on number of employees (with hat tip to Visual Capitalist): 

How to keep the discussion going:

• When you hear about an analysis describing the “largest company,” what do you think are the various ways to measure the size of a company?
• Do you think there would be a different company in every state if the analysis was done based on the largest company by revenue? You might have them google “largest companies in each state by revenue.” Here is the map that they would find.
• Maybe, you want to extend the analysis further and find the most valuable company in terms of market value (a.k.a. market capitalization). Well we have that one here. The market cap map (has a nice ring to it) will vary more based on the vagary of stock prices since market cap is equal to the stock price multiplied by the number of shares outstanding so as stock price changes so does market cap.
• Finally, what if you took all of this information and created a spreadsheet and had the students fill in the largest company in each state by these three metrics (employees, revenue and market cap.). Well, I got you started here with a Google sheet.

If you are still with me now (thank you for your persistence!), well, here’s where it gets interesting where students get to engage in some pattern recognition:

• How many of the states have the same company listed for each of the three metrics? If so, do you see any common traits with these companies?
• Do you see any patterns regarding the the industry type of companies that are largest in each state based on number of employees (e.g. do you see a lot of retailers on this list since they tend to have lots of employees)? 
• Do you see any patterns regarding the the industry type of companies that are largest in each state based on revenue?
• Do you see any patterns regarding the industry type of companies that are largest in each state based on market capitalization?
• Do you think there is a relationship between the market value (market cap) of a company and the number of employees it has? Does your spreadsheet demonstrate this relationship? Do you find that the largest company by market cap in a given state is also the largest by employees?
• Are there any regional trends (e.g., technology companies on the west coast, finance in the east)?
• Any other patterns that you can discern from the data?

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If you made it this far, you must love data. Here’s another NGPF Data Crunch you will enjoy: How Has Teen Spending Changed Over The Past Decade? 

About the Author

Tim Ranzetta

Tim's saving habits started at seven when a neighbor with a broken hip gave him a dog walking job. Her recovery, which took almost a year, resulted in Tim getting to know the bank tellers quite well (and accumulating a savings account balance of over $300!). His recent entrepreneurial adventures have included driving a shredding truck, analyzing executive compensation packages for Fortune 500 companies and helping families make better college financing decisions. After volunteering in 2010 to create and teach a personal finance program at Eastside College Prep in East Palo Alto, Tim saw firsthand the impact of an engaging and activity-based curriculum, which inspired him to start a new non-profit, Next Gen Personal Finance.