u/Afraid-Search-904

A score of 1 means that capital/largest city is exactly on the state border and 0 means capital/largest city is at center. Part of the inspiration came from noticing just how close cities like Trenton, Philadelphia, and Detroit are to the border.

Peripherality index is calculated using: 1-min(dist(capital, state border), dist(largest city, state border))/(max distance of interior point from border). One could also calculate such an index for each county, and then take the average (or median) across all the counties in the state.