Why are some numbers secret? The mystery of the “D”
In the toy-factory quiz, some states have no number at all — the government table just shows the letter “D.” Is it a mistake? A missing page? Neither. It is a promise. And with one clever bit of math, you can still find the champion.
The Census Bureau asks businesses all over the country about their work, and it makes them a promise. In its own words: “In accordance with federal law governing census reports (Title 13 of the United States Code), no data are published that would disclose the operations of an individual establishment or business.” When a number would break that promise, the table shows a “D” instead, which means: “Withheld to avoid disclosing data for individual companies; data are included in higher level totals.”
Basis: U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Data Dictionary, “Disclosure.” Quotations unchanged.
Why hide a whole state’s number? Imagine a state with only one big toy factory. Its “state total” would really be that one company’s total — so publishing it would give the company’s secret away. The Census explains: “If the suppressed cell value were known, it would allow one to estimate an individual survey unit’s data too closely.” And because a sneaky reader could work out a hidden number by subtracting the others, “additional cells may also be suppressed.” Some rows are never printed at all: “data rows with fewer than three contributing firms or three contributing establishments are not presented.”
Basis: U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Methodology, “Disclosure avoidance.” Quotations unchanged; the one-factory state is our own illustration of the rule.
Here is the clever part. Hiding a number does not delete it: “The process of suppression does not change the higher-level totals.” So the U.S. total still contains every hidden state. Take the U.S. total, subtract all the states that are shown, and what is left is an estimate of all the hidden states put together in one pile. (The Census warns that figures worked out from its tables by subtraction are not official Census numbers — they are our own arithmetic.) If the leading state is bigger than that whole pile by more than any small rounding could change, then no single hidden state can beat it — no matter how the pile is split up. That is how this site checks the top four in the toy quiz before calling them the national top four.
Basis: Follows from the quoted rule (hidden values stay inside the U.S. total). U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Data Dictionary: “Unpublished estimates derived from this table by subtraction … should not be attributed to the U.S. Census Bureau.” The check runs on every build of this site (claim toys_oh_top4_national in pipeline/curated/claims.json).
Why would a company care if people knew its sales? Our guess: a competitor could use the numbers to see how well a rival is doing, or where it is growing. The Census pages quoted here state the rule and the law behind it; they do not list companies’ reasons, so treat this as a hypothesis.
※ A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
📊 Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.