States with more dog owners tend to also have more cat owners, but the correlation is fairly weak.

To compare how much a state prefers dogs or cats, I used this formula:

\[ \text{Difference} = \% \text{ of Dog Owners} - \% \text{ of Cat Owners} \]

• If the result is positive, dogs are more common.
  
• If the result is negative, cats are more common.

To get the percent of households that own pets, we used this formula:

\[ \text{Percent with pets} = \left( \frac{\text{Pet-owning households}}{\text{Total households in that state}} \right) \times 100 \]

Let’s look at two states:

\[ \text{Arizona:} \quad \frac{1497}{2515} \times 100 \approx 59.5\% \quad \text{own pets} \] \[ \text{California:} \quad \frac{6865}{12974} \times 100 \approx 52.9\% \quad \text{own pets} \]

These values help us measure pet preference differences on the next slide.

• Dog ownership is more common than cat ownership in most U.S. states.
  
• Some states strongly favor one pet over the other.
  
• States with high dog ownership often have moderate to high cat ownership too.
  
• Future studies could explore what affects pet preference, such as income or region.

\[ \text{Preference Gap} = \% \text{Dog Owners} - \% \text{Cat Owners} \]

\[ \hat{y} = \beta_0 + \beta_1 x \]