Worldwide cache numbers updated

[+sTeamTraen]

I furst posted this Excel sheet a couple of months ago.

 

The latest version lets you see the percentage or absolute increases in cache numbers of various countries/states in the last 2 months.

 

I'd like to point out that France has a higher percentage growth that any country of comparable or greater size, but then someone would (rightly) accuse me of cherry-picking statistics.

[+macroderma]

I furst posted this Excel sheet a couple of months ago.

 

The latest version lets you see the percentage or absolute increases in cache numbers of various countries/states in the last 2 months.

 

I'd like to point out that France has a higher percentage growth that any country of comparable or greater size, but then someone would (rightly) accuse me of cherry-picking statistics.

 

Fascinating stuff (or maybe I am a bit of an anorak!)

 

Cache density is interesting - only California (where it started) and Germany are higher than the UK

 

caching seems to be surprisingly popular in Sweden too - 7k caches, and they can't get to them for half the year!

[+sTeamTraen]

Bump... new numbers today. France is the second-fastest growing "major" area (more than 1000 caches), after Portugal.

[+kewfriend]

Oh dear I'm an anorak as well .... because I found this interesting as well.

 

Germany, second only to California as the world centre of geocaching .... well well well, with the UK coming in at No 4 after Canada.

 

The USA still dominating Geocaching as a whole, more than the rest of the world put together, and unsurprsingly Europe as a whole dominating growth - call it the lag time.

 

For those with 9000 caches or more, the density per population is interesting and suggests a possible plateau.

 

Hours of geek fun - tx indeed

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

Thank you for the numbers!

 

Bump... new numbers today. France is the second-fastest growing "major" area (more than 1000 caches), after Portugal.

 

It's been fun watching the growing rate of caches and geocachers. There's a clear a connection between these numbers and presence of "GPS" and "Geocaching" on the media, with news stories on magazines, newspapers, tv and radio.

 

Of course there's always a downside, but luckly the balance is very positive.

[+gazooks]

Very interesting

 

An interesting addition would be the number of cachers in each of the countries.

Then compare cache density per cacher.

 

Is that possble ?

[+sTeamTraen]

An interesting addition would be the number of cachers in each of the countries.

Then compare cache density per cacher.

 

Is that possble ?

 

A few issues to resolve before you can have that:

- Define "cacher". (If that's not obvious, try defining "Active cacher").

- Find a way to display the number of cachers per country. All the cache statistics in the Excel sheet to which I linked, are derived directly from this site (yes, I really do click on "Find caches in... <country>", times 140, every couple of months).

 

You could maybe ask Groundspeak for the number of Premium Members per state country geographical entity, but I doubt if you'd get an answer. (Well, you probably would, but it wouldn't be numerical. )

[+Simply Paul]

The pedant in me wants to point out caching started in Ohio, not California. He's usually easy to gag and bind, but my lasse fair side's not awake yet. Anyway, all good interesting data. Thanks for sharing!

[+Team Sieni]

I'd like to point out that France has a higher percentage growth that any country of comparable or greater size, but then someone would (rightly) accuse me of cherry-picking statistics.

 

Indeed, but France does seem to be doing rather poorly on the "caches per variety of cheese" metric.

 

I make it 13.5 using de Gaulle's value of 246. ("How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?")

 

Edited to add - what started out as a silly post suddenly got serious.

 

Wikipedia gives 300 to 400 for Frenc varieties of chees the figure falls to 9.5!

 

However, the British Cheese Board tells me that the British figure is 700, giving a value of 31.37

 

... and ilovecheese.co.uk gives a figure of 300 for Belgium, so Belgium scores 8.2

 

Must go and get a life

Edited October 2, 2007 by Team Sieni

[+sTeamTraen]

I'd like to point out that France has a higher percentage growth that any country of comparable or greater size, but then someone would (rightly) accuse me of cherry-picking statistics.

 

Indeed, but France does seem to be doing rather poorly on the "caches per variety of cheese" metric.

 

All unfavourable statistics can be turned in one's favour using the power of -1.

 

In this case, I think you should count the number of varieties of cheese which you can enjoy per 100 caches. That's at least 8 for France without having to import anything.

 

The pedant in me wants to point out caching started in Ohio, not California.

 

You have a dodgy pedant there (oo-er missus). The inhabitants of Oregon would like a word with him. I do hope nobody here has ever accused Americans of being geographically ignorant.

[markandlynn]

You could maybe ask Groundspeak for the number of Premium Members per state country geographical entity, but I doubt if you'd get an answer. (Well, you probably would, but it wouldn't be numerical. )

 

Arround 6000 people have used itsnotaboutthe numbers so thats a minimum number of pm's id guess that the number who subscribe to gsak would provide more detail??

 

can someone go catch that pedant its after my pet niggle

[+Firth of Forth]

I like the cache per 1000km figure for the Vatican.

[+Simply Paul]

The pedant in me wants to point out caching started in Ohio, not California.

You have a dodgy pedant there (oo-er missus). The inhabitants of Oregon would like a word with him. I do hope nobody here has ever accused Americans of being geographically ignorant.

Ohio, Oregon... same first letter at least. You're right, I meant Oregon. It seems my pedant wasn't fully awake either

 

Edit: Where can I find the cheese-to-cache ratio for Ohio and Oregon? Just for the comparison...

Edited October 3, 2007 by Simply Paul

[+sTeamTraen]

I can't let that figure of 700 cheeses in the UK go unchallenged. If every micro-producer's variation on Brie or Cheddar is included then maybe, but if there were a requirement that at least two farms produce it for it to count, France would be ahead by a factor of at least 10.

 

It's difficult for people who have never lived in France to understand just how important cheese is here. The expression "c'est fromage ou dessert" - derived from the cheaper menus at the front of the book in the restaurant - is widely as way to express the idea that you're going to have to compromise on something rather basic. Indeed in many parts of the country it's not possible to find a set meal without a cheese course, even if it's rather cursory.

[+kewfriend]

and remember, cheese is eaten with a knife and fork and no biscuits

[+Team Sieni]

I can't let that figure of 700 cheeses in the UK go unchallenged. If every micro-producer's variation on Brie or Cheddar is included then maybe, but if there were a requirement that at least two farms produce it for it to count, France would be ahead by a factor of at least 10.

 

Well, I can only cite my source whether it's right or not I can't say.

 

I do like your suggestion that "you should count the number of varieties of cheese which you can enjoy per 100 caches." This would certainly provide an added incentive to get out there hunting. So far I have only one French cache, and using de Gaulle's figure it means I have to chercher encore 12 caches to get my first cheese! Using the disputed 700 for England, after over three years of caching, I'm still just short of my second British cheese.

 

I can see it now. www.cheesecaching.com C'est pas about les numeros!

 

We had some nice Sage Derby last night by the way... although I'm not really entitled to it according to my stats.

[markandlynn]

quote name='sTeamTraen' post='3096988' date='Oct 3 2007, 05:39 PM'

I can't let that figure of 700 cheeses in the UK go unchallenged. If every micro-producer's variation on Brie or Cheddar is included then maybe, but if there were a requirement that at least two farms produce it for it to count, France would be ahead by a factor of at least 10.

 

Well, I can only cite my source whether it's right or not I can't say.

 

I do like your suggestion that "you should count the number of varieties of cheese which you can enjoy per 100 caches." This would certainly provide an added incentive to get out there hunting. So far I have only one French cache, and using de Gaulle's figure it means I have to chercher encore 12 caches to get my first cheese! Using the disputed 700 for England, after over three years of caching, I'm still just short of my second British cheese.

 

I can see it now. www.cheesecaching.com C'est pas about les numeros!

 

We had some nice Sage Derby last night by the way... although I'm not really entitled to it according to my stats.

 

Ive drafted in some independent cheese counting help

[+L8HNB]

and remember, cheese is eaten with a knife and fork and no biscuits

 

Biscuits, knife & fork?

 

No, a pint of traditional cider is the only way usually followed by another

 

H

[+sTeamTraen]

I've just uploaded the latest version. This shows the developments in cache numbers over the last 6 months.

 

France is still the country with the highest growth rate of anywhere with its number of caches or more.

 

A new feature is the second sheet, showing a summary by region of the world. Europe is the fastest-growing!

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

Great! Thanks again for your effort. Portugal is doing very good, also.

[+sTeamTraen]

Two months have gone by, so here's a new version.

 

I've excluded territories with fewer than 200 caches from the percentage ratings, as they can give some very skewed results with just a couple of caches. If their growth continues, they'll hit 200 soon enough.

 

Some trivia:

- 5 US states hit 10,000 actice caches in the last two months.

- Almost 50% of caches in Germany now have their state listed.

- The numbers are growing substantially faster outside the US than within the US.

Edited January 27, 2008 by sTeamTraen

[+sTeamTraen]

boing

Edited January 27, 2008 by sTeamTraen

[+sTeamTraen]

New version today: here.

 

Several European countries have passed the 5000 mark in the last couple of months. France is almost there

 

Next post will be in two months, which will be the first anniversary of the table.

[+Von-Horst]

New version today: here.

 

Several European countries have passed the 5000 mark in the last couple of months. France is almost there

 

Next post will be in two months, which will be the first anniversary of the table.

 

Interesting stuff!

 

Would it be possible to sort the results by region (so that the USA is grouped together, as is Europe etc) so that the information is a bit easier to digest?

[+sTeamTraen]

Would it be possible to sort the results by region (so that the USA is grouped together, as is Europe etc) so that the information is a bit easier to digest?

 

I think you'll find that Excel can do that for you I only upload it sorted this way to make France look good...

[+rutson]

On what criteria do you select countries to include?

 

Reason I ask, Belarus, with only one cache is included, Peru with 18 is not.

[+sTeamTraen]

On what criteria do you select countries to include?

 

Reason I ask, Belarus, with only one cache is included, Peru with 18 is not.

 

When doing the first version, I wanted to include all European countries, just for completeness (I agree that it's only a partial completeness). But otherwise the list is arbitrary.

 

Currently I only count territories (= countries or states, etc) with 200 or more caches in the "sorted by" lists. That's also an arbitrary number.

 

At some point I will break the numbers for Germany down into states, but since just over 40% of German caches both were submitted before states came in and haven't been updated, that would give slightly strange results.

[+sTeamTraen]

Bump! I've updated the spreadsheet today.

 

Something seems to be taking off in South Korea and Spain, whose growth rates have both jumped enormously in the last 7 months.

[+Tavisman]

Wow, this is like catnip to me. I wondered what the figures would be like with the number of cachers per area _ so I found out! Amazingly Croatia comes up top with only one cacher and 270 caches!

 

See : http://tinyurl.com/Tavisman-Stats

Source: http://www.cacherstats.com/

[+sTeamTraen]

I wondered what the figures would be like with the number of cachers per area _ so I found out! Amazingly Croatia comes up top with only one cacher and 270 caches!

I'm not sure you can draw any conclusions from those numbers. The accounts listed at cacherstats.com have to have 200 finds before they appear. There could be 100 active cachers in Croatia with between 1 and 199 finds.

 

It would seem quite logical that a country with around 200-400 finds would only have one or two who had found more than half of them. As the number of caches increases, the numbers having found 200 should increase faster. So I suspect that all you've found is that 200-400 divided by 1 or 2 is larger than 3000 divided by 50.

Edited July 8, 2009 by sTeamTraen

[+qrang]

I'm surprised that there are no statistics for anywhere south of the USA.

 

Does nobody cache in Latin America or the Caribbean?

[+sTeamTraen]

I'm surprised that there are no statistics for anywhere south of the USA.

The presence or absence of any given country is a function of whether or not I could be bothered.

 

In fact I started off with a table for Europe, and since I work for an organisation where pretty well every tiny state in Europe is either a member or an observer, I included every country in "Europe" (yes, yes, I know...) as well as the "major" countries elsewhere. So that explains why, say, the Vatican is in there whereas Argentina isn't. Simple lack of ambition on my part.

 

If someone would like to provide the numbers (sq.km, population, etc) for any missing country, I will add it to the list and even maintain the cache count in future updates; can't say fairer than that, eh?

[+rutson]

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ :-P

[+sTeamTraen]

I meant "provide the fields in an Excel sheet, all neatly typed".

[Archangel_UK]

I'd like to point out that France has a higher percentage growth that any country of comparable or greater size, but then someone would (rightly) accuse me of cherry-picking statistics.

 

Indeed, but France does seem to be doing rather poorly on the "caches per variety of cheese" metric.

 

All unfavourable statistics can be turned in one's favour using the power of -1.

 

In this case, I think you should count the number of varieties of cheese which you can enjoy per 100 caches. That's at least 8 for France without having to import anything.

 

The pedant in me wants to point out caching started in Ohio, not California.

 

You have a dodgy pedant there (oo-er missus). The inhabitants of Oregon would like a word with him. I do hope nobody here has ever accused Americans of being geographically ignorant.

 

that would be hard considering that all the Americans i have spoken to do not have a good perception of world geography........... more along the lines of "i am blonde " sorry ladies

[+qrang]

Working for a large American company, I went to their distribution centre in Pensylvania. Their manager responsible for international distribution had never been outside the USA and didn't know the difference between Austria and Australia

[+The Ravens]

You have a dodgy pedant there (oo-er missus). The inhabitants of Oregon would like a word with him. I do hope nobody here has ever accused Americans of being geographically ignorant.

 

Yes.. but my state, Kansas, has the oldest "active" cache in the world "Mingo (GC30)" And I was surprised to find that out.

[+sTeamTraen]

Bump! I've updated the spreadsheet today.

[+sTeamTraen]

Is 13¾ years too long for a bump? Here are the latest numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J_YQCWr29u8rTztVML9UYhXfux68xRGA/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=113582013589336579669&rtpof=true&sd=true

 

(There have been other intervening updates to the table, but apparently I forgot to post them in this forum.)