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Statistics - bend it anyway you like!


Carbon Hunter

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Today is November and that one is October. I think there was a shift during the last two months.

No, I don't see it in the data. Yet.

 

I have found that many cachers take a surprisingly long time to log their finds, which makes any recent (last few days') statistics suspect. (I recently noticed an increase in the number of logs as far back as 2004!)

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I recently noticed an increase in the number of logs as far back as 2004!)

Which logs were these? That sounds very suspect!!!

I unfortunately did not investigate it at the time. It actually happens all the time - although 4 years is probably the longest back I have noticed. I suspect it could have been a number of those retro-TB logs. I shall check when I notice it again.

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Interesting graph.

There is a little jump each December. Must be as everyone get the new toys for December.

And looks like Gerhard is right, there are lots of new cachers in the last year. Around 110 to 120 each month.

The query I created retrieves the very first date each geocaching team, has found their first cache.

Then tallies up the amount of first finds for that month.

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I have not seen anything in the GPX files which could elude to retrieving that info.

 

I think the only way would be to check who has done "Member only caches". or to go through each person's profile and check.

 

We have done only 1 member's only cache, so I think those stats would be unreliable.

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I have not seen anything in the GPX files which could elude to retrieving that info.

 

I think the only way would be to check who has done "Member only caches". or to go through each person's profile and check.

 

We have done only 1 member's only cache, so I think those stats would be unreliable.

Agreed - I have NO member only caches.

 

I have been a Premium Member - was not for almost 9 moneths - and AM again.

 

So that would be difficult.

 

also finds on member onoly caches may not be reliable as there are visitors and a lot of Premium Members may not have found them - I believe I only have a single MoC (in Lutzville)?

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Yes, we now know who is taking time to record DNF’s. I would like to see a list that never recorded any DNF’s. A list of the lucky ones that do find the ones all the time. But maybe this is not politically correct to publish a list like that so please e-mail me the list if you want.

 

I just received a number of logs from new cachers. During the event another team joined. The youngest team I ever met. They were cachers for one day when they attended the event. So something is cooking. The graph is quite interesting and the exponential growth confirms my suspicion. Thanks. Gerhard

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I recently noticed an increase in the number of logs as far back as 2004!)

Which logs were these? That sounds very suspect!!!

I unfortunately did not investigate it at the time. It actually happens all the time - although 4 years is probably the longest back I have noticed. I suspect it could have been a number of those retro-TB logs. I shall check when I notice it again.

On 9 November 2009 a cacher logged 5 caches which he had found on 31 May 2008. That is more than 17 months later. Now that is what I call a good memory!

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Yes, we now know who is taking time to record DNF’s. I would like to see a list that never recorded any DNF’s. A list of the lucky ones that do find the ones all the time. But maybe this is not politically correct to publish a list like that so please e-mail me the list if you want.

The most successful cacher (I shall not name names!) has more than 400 finds without a single DNF! There are two more with more than 200 finds who also have no DNF.

 

Somebody asked about the DNF "karma", the ratio of DNFs to Finds:

To my surprise I do not top the list. There is one unfortunate soul who has 63 DNF's and only 19 finds. (That would completely break my confidence!)

 

For cachers with more than 100 finds:

(Rank, name, finds, DNFs, ratio)

1 macbow 132 48 36.4%

2 Tinkerbell-GP 124 28 22.6%

3 Danie Viljoen 634 136 21.5%

4 Skyjuggler 250 52 20.8%

5 j3caching 283 57 20.1%

6 triptrick 102 20 19.6%

7 pelican's briefs 140 27 19.3%

8 KeithWood 747 142 19.0%

9 sailingkatryn 117 22 18.8%

10 Far-Jar-Hug 172 31 18.0%

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Never ever again will I complain about a DNF. I was very quiet when I read that they want to publish the list of the DNF in relationship with the finds – I was sure that my name is going to be there somewhere at the top. Danie, this would have seriously ruined our friendship. (LOL) So my DNF’s is just average and acceptable. This made my day. :D

 

I also discovered a new fact. Danie was so kind to send me the name of the persons with the least DNF, in this case this person have zero DNF’s with high finds. What does this point to? It only means one thing and one thing alone. He is the person with the most telephone numbers and he does phone when he gets stuck. He did phone me a couple of times for help and it was given. Maybe I should point him in the wrong direction the next time. (LOL) :)

 

Tinkerbell what happened? You are topping number 2. I thought Wazat was looking after you – looks like I have to have a serious talk with him. Wazat where are you? :)

 

I do have great respect for the person with 19 finds and 68 DNF’s. That is what I call gutsy and honesty. With time this is the person that will continue until “death we part” with geocaching. If you hit 50 I will personally make sure that you receive a 50 finds coin, this is an effort worth rewarding. Never say “die”.

 

Danie this was very interesting stats and I learned a lesson. I hope you survive when the other cachers read this. In my personal opinion this list is reflecting the most honest cachers with regards to DNF’s and who is not phoning for every cache that they battle with. :) Thanks

Gerhard

Edited by gerhardoosMPsa
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I recently noticed an increase in the number of logs as far back as 2004!)

Which logs were these? That sounds very suspect!!!

I unfortunately did not investigate it at the time. It actually happens all the time - although 4 years is probably the longest back I have noticed. I suspect it could have been a number of those retro-TB logs. I shall check when I notice it again.

On 9 November 2009 a cacher logged 5 caches which he had found on 31 May 2008. That is more than 17 months later. Now that is what I call a good memory!

This does seem odd.

 

I had a European cacher log one of my SA cachers about a year after they "found" it too in Joburg?

 

But thenm = it is not for us to judge?

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.....I also discovered a new fact. Danie was so kind to send me the name of the persons with the least DNF, in this case this person have zero DNF’s with high finds. What does this point to? It only means one thing and one thing alone. He is the person with the most telephone numbers and he does phone when he gets stuck. He did phone me a couple of times for help and it was given. Maybe I should point him in the wrong direction the next time. (LOL) :) ........

 

Hey Gerhard, maybe this geocacher does not LOG any DNFs!!! Did you consider that? We often come across geocachers who log notes of not finding a cache instead of a DNF, so actually it would be difficult to correctly determine this ratio! :)

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Danie, there is a snake in the grass. I just ran some quick queries and I found a problem. I was running a query with one cacher name and who posted a note. My database unfortunately is divided in an archived, default, found database and others. I ran it on the default database and 4 notes were returned. Guess what these notes were saying “I could not find it”.

 

This cacher is not logging DNF’s but he logs it as a note. I then ran the same queries on the “caches found” database, another couple of notes were returned and then I saw it. There was a little man which was not smiling. So he has at least one formal DNF and a couple of notes as DNF’s. I stopped at this point. If you want I can combine all the fragments in one huge database and ran one query on it to see the total effect if needed.

 

This is going to change the names on your list. You have to redo this. The names are not correct. Please remember if you place my name on the top it will seriously dent our relationship. :)

 

Ok there goes my lesson out the window with compliments from the Geo936 team. :)

 

Gerhard

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Gerhard, you are right - something went wrong with my Excel lookup. (I did not realize that the data needs to be sorted first. Sorry, Tinkerbell-GP!) I really hope it is right now. I do realize that some cachers log DNFs in a note. (I wonder why?) Those DNFs are not counted here - it will require a manual process for which I do not have time. The list now looks like this:

 

Rank Cacher Finds DNFs Ratio

1. macbow 132 48 36.4%

2. Danie Viljoen 634 136 21.5%

3. Skyjuggler 250 52 20.8%

4. j3caching 283 57 20.1%

5. triptrick 102 20 19.6%

6. pelican's briefs 140 27 19.3%

7. KeithWood 747 142 19.0%

8. sailingkatryn 117 22 18.8%

9. Far-Jar-Hug 172 31 18.0%

10. steve&sav 231 41 17.7%

 

(Gerhard, you come in at no. 96 with 8.3%!)

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Danie this looks like the real reflection. Wazat and the lovebug are still watching over Tinkerbell. :D I have no reason to complain about a DNF. At the end of the day I still hate a DNF.

 

It is strange to see a DNF note – but I need to read more in detail all his notes to see the pattern. I think there is a method in this madness. The one DNF that he logged was gone for sure and it was verified. It appears as if he uses notes for “not sure if it is there or not”. He uses this technique for verification the next time around. While I was glancing over his notes I notice a couple of good notes. He warned a couple of cachers that he will visit their area and he need to know if the cache was replaced or the status of the cache. Those that did not respond were never visited. He even contacted owners that a TB tracking number was added to some logs. Just a pity that the cache owners are not responding to his requests. This must be quite frustrating. It looks like he is very persistent in his planning. He does plan his caches in advance and if I look at his finds then I can see why he selects certain caches and others he just ignore. Strange how much you can learn from a cacher if you start to analyse his logs for any patterns.

 

One stat that fascinates me is the length of the log. According to GSAK I used a total of 93 819 words in 1074 logs with a character count of 477 932. This is about 87 words per log. Maybe this is the reason why my right arm is so strong. :)

 

Gerhard

Edited by gerhardoosMPsa
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One stat that fascinates me is the length of the log. According to GSAK I used a total of 93 819 words in 1074 logs with a character count of 477 932. This is about 87 words per log. Maybe this is the reason why my right arm is so strong. :)

Now this will be an interesting statistic - to see who has the strongest (logging) arm! I shall see if I can manage the SQL for this one; maybe I'll need DamhuisClan's help.

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Now this will be an interesting statistic - to see who has the strongest (logging) arm! I shall see if I can manage the SQL for this one; maybe I'll need DamhuisClan's help.

 

Select

lBy as Team,

count(lText) as LogCount,

sum(length(lText)) as TotalCharacters,

sum(length(lText)) / count(lText) as CharsPerLog

from Logs

--where lBy in ("DamhuisClan", "Danie Viljoen","RedGlobe")

group by lBy

order by LogCount DESC

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Another milestone: The 4000th cacher (BBreezers) made a log in South Africa on 3 November.

 

Out of interest, how did you get to that figure?

Overgeset synde, what does it mean?

BBreezers was the 4000th unique person to log something in South Africa. To put it differently - he was cacher no. 4000. Logged, but not necessarily found something - we still have about 300 to go before we reach the 4000th first find.

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One stat that fascinates me is the length of the log. According to GSAK I used a total of 93 819 words in 1074 logs with a character count of 477 932. This is about 87 words per log. Maybe this is the reason why my right arm is so strong. :)

Now this will be an interesting statistic - to see who has the strongest (logging) arm! I shall see if I can manage the SQL for this one; maybe I'll need DamhuisClan's help.

 

One name comes to mind..... GerhardoosMPsa. I doubt that we even have to run any queries....

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One stat that fascinates me is the length of the log. According to GSAK I used a total of 93 819 words in 1074 logs with a character count of 477 932. This is about 87 words per log. Maybe this is the reason why my right arm is so strong. :lol:

Now this will be an interesting statistic - to see who has the strongest (logging) arm! I shall see if I can manage the SQL for this one; maybe I'll need DamhuisClan's help.

I would also be interested in the other end of the spectrum....

Who are our (maybe more than 50 finds) less verbose loggers?

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Wazat, this is a puzzle, try to solve it. Who is going to get an extremely long log on his listings during my next visit? Hint: He has a red little bug which rides on turtles and he love FTF’s. (Lol) :lol:

 

Yep I think it will also be nice to see a list of the cachers with the shortest logs. At least if they visit one of my caches I will be able to understand their logs as normal.

 

I have one which say “found” and then another one that have no words except a smiley. This type of log confuses me – is it a bad cache, he does not like it, or does he like it, is there something wrong with the cache, is the smiley the opposite of what it represents or is it just his way to say thanks? I wrote an e-mail to this cacher to get more information and he never replied. I assume that my cache was not to his standard or else he does not like conversations. Who knows? Gerhard

Edited by gerhardoosMPsa
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I find the following graph of the cumulative number of caches and cachers versus time quite interesting:

 

CachesCachersovertime.jpg

 

It is remarkable how well the number of caches tracks the number of cachers - from the very beginning the ratio is never far from 1. I am curious to see if the soccer world cup will have a noticeable effect on the number of cachers next year.

Edited by Danie Viljoen
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Just an aside - Abu Dhabi has a very low number of resident cachers - probably about 10 of us that are active in the area.

 

But we got a good few cachers over the recent Forumla 1 Grand Prix - from Germany - UK and Spain.

 

So I am positive that the soccer is going to bring in cachers. Good opportutntiy for a few events I'm sure. Not sure there will be a cocentration of them - but certainly some one off meetings.

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Haa haa Gerhard you bugger... I am looking forward to your log.

 

How about this, who has the longest cache listing. ie: Cache description? Tinkerbell-GP just loathes having to page through pages and pages of information on my Nuvi to find a clue or the cache logs.

 

On the other end which is the shortest cache listing?

 

Have we worked out which is the cache with the least find to age ratio?

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How about this, who has the longest cache listing. ie: Cache description? Tinkerbell-GP just loathes having to page through pages and pages of information on my Nuvi to find a clue or the cache logs.

 

On the other end which is the shortest cache listing?

 

Have we worked out which is the cache with the least find to age ratio?

Description length:

The longest cache description by far is for CrystalFairy's GC1CWN8 - Spanish Fugitive, with 5632 words and 33592 characters.

There are several caches with no descriptions, where the owner put everything in the short description (the summary at the top of the listing).

There are even a number of caches (62 in total) with no long OR short descriptions. GC13PCG is one example.

 

Title length:

Shortest: 2 Characters: Nu, Xi, Mu, G6

Longest: 50 Characters:

Bridge in the Middle of Nowhere: steve&sav's folly

Environmental Theme East - An Ironic Juxtaposition

Is it a bird? Is it a Plane? NO its Tazan and Jane

 

Least find to age ratio:

If I understand the term correctly it must be the oldest unfound cache: GC10571 - Orange River - Terraces, placed 2 Jan 2007.

Edited by Danie Viljoen
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Least find to age ratio:

If I understand the term correctly it must be the oldest unfound cache: GC10571 - Orange River - Terraces, placed 2 Jan 2007.

The highest find to age ratio, or the most frequently found cache, is GC8B5D - Tygerberg Cache, which is found every 1.8 days on average. (I only considered caches older than 2 weeks.)

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I have often wished I had chosen a shorter caching name when trying to sign one of those microscopic nano logs.

The shortest I could find among the more than 250 000 names in my database is: °

And I am grateful mine is not as long as: Pirates of Shropshire - we luv hunting fa treasure. (50 characters!)

The longest name of a South African cacher is: Dolphin Killer Jane & Kraken Boy. (32 characters)

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The longest logs:

There are 3 logs that stand out from the rest:

The longest, if one counts characters, is rodnjoan's log on GC1R7N4. It is 3023 characters (553 words).

The log with the most words is the pooks' log on GCY3RE. It is 578 words (2911 characters).

Between the two we have deon_engel's log on GC1492E. It is 558 words (2959 characters).

 

The average length of all of the 152 000+ logs is 23 words (123 characters).

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Least find to age ratio:

If I understand the term correctly it must be the oldest unfound cache: GC10571 - Orange River - Terraces, placed 2 Jan 2007.

For active caches found at least once, it is GCJN7F - Getowerdekop, placed on 21 Dec 2003, and found only once since then.

Also on the rarely found list you could add GCY3RE Point of no return. Hidden on 2 September 2006, first and only find 5 September 2009 - just making 3 years before being found - or even attempted.

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If I understand the term correctly it must be the oldest unfound cache: GC10571 - Orange River - Terraces, placed 2 Jan 2007.

 

This cache was actually found the day after placing it, as there happened to be a cacher on the river trip I was on, so I gave him the co-ords once I had hidden it.

He never logged his find though :laughing:

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If I understand the term correctly it must be the oldest unfound cache: GC10571 - Orange River - Terraces, placed 2 Jan 2007.

 

This cache was actually found the day after placing it, as there happened to be a cacher on the river trip I was on, so I gave him the co-ords once I had hidden it.

He never logged his find though :signalviolin:

In that case it should be GC12TZN - MITRE (in the Drakensberg).

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Longest average log length:

1. Sussex Leprechauns: 479.2 characters

2. 34south: 368.9 characters

3. GEO936: 358.0 characters

4. rodnjoan: 356.3 characters

5. Raymond E: 347.6 characters

 

To my surprise gerhardoosMPsa does not feature in the top list (his average is "only" 282.3!)

 

The average length of all the logs is 122.8 characters.

 

For this list I only considered cachers with more than 20 logs, but I counted ALL logs (including notes, maintenance notes, etc.) I suspect the list will change if one only counts find logs.

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Danie, thanks for the stats. At least I am not going over board. Ok, I will increase the log length from now on. I will stop at volume 2. Danie, is there a way to connect GSAK with Google, same as Gsak is doing to determine…

1. Cacher that have to most caches at the highest ASL.

2. Cacher that have done the highest cache above sea level.

Gerhard

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Danie, thanks for the stats. At least I am not going over board. Ok, I will increase the log length from now on. I will stop at volume 2. Danie, is there a way to connect GSAK with Google, same as Gsak is doing to determine…

1. Cacher that have to most caches at the highest ASL.

2. Cacher that have done the highest cache above sea level.

Gerhard

I am not aware of any GSAK macro that will give you that information. It should definitely be possible to do it, though.

 

While we are on this topic, which is the highest cache in South Africa? My guess is that it will be one of the Natal Drakensberg caches.

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