holograph Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 The October statistics are available on the statistics page. The maps and counts by county have been updated also. There were 512 datasheets updated with new GEOCAC recovery logs. The most recent recovery added to the datasheets was dated October 18. Quote Link to comment
+Harry Dolphin Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 Great job, Jim! Lookes like I missed the cut off for Sullivan County, NH. Oh, well. Next month! And I'm only six short in Monroe County, PA! Quote Link to comment
+m&h Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 As always, we're deeply grateful for the pleasure we take in this terrific work. Thanks again! Quote Link to comment
+shorbird Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Glad to see that the NGS has updated the datasheets so soon! Thanks again for compiling all of this information for us and then producing the maps and numbers. Your efforts are greatly appreciated! Quote Link to comment
AZcachemeister Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 Looks like my submissions didn't make the cut. But, Arizona is still so very nice and RED! Quote Link to comment
VagabondsWV Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 I was pleased to see my uploads on the maps this past cycle (3 new counties in Florida – Collier, Desoto, & Manatee and 1 in South Carolina – Chester ) plus pushed 2 more WV counties to the Red. The most pleasing, however, is your continued work with the maps, county & data stats that we all love to see. As others have said your work is most appreciated. Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 4, 2011 Author Share Posted November 4, 2011 (edited) Looks like my submissions didn't make the cut. But, Arizona is still so very nice and RED! Yeah, I may have to add another color, just to keep them motivated. edit: How about these new colors? Click the image for a full-size view. Edited November 4, 2011 by holograph Quote Link to comment
AZcachemeister Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 No worries, I'm still motivated! Quote Link to comment
Wintertime Posted November 5, 2011 Share Posted November 5, 2011 Yeah, I may have to add another color, just to keep them motivated. If there really are counties with 500 or 1,000 recoveries, then yes, I vote for creating unique colors for those situations! Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 6, 2011 Author Share Posted November 6, 2011 Here's another map that is "fair" to all counties, in some sense of the word "fair". It shows the density of reports rather than simple counts. However, it would be hard for someone to calculate how many more reports are needed in order to bump a county to the next color. For those of you who are technically inclined, the map actually shows inverse density, because the counties are colored based on average square miles per report. Click on the thumbnail below for a larger map. Quote Link to comment
kayakbird Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 How about these new colors? Click the image for a full-size view. I'm happy to see that I have a 'Blue' county in my Excel file, but just noticed the glaring white in Wyo just south of my summer range. Will try to get those on my next fall migration. Still thinking that a color for > 50% of possible for counties with < one hundred total would be interesting to see. kayakbird Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 6, 2011 Author Share Posted November 6, 2011 (edited) Still thinking that a color for > 50% of possible for counties with < one hundred total would be interesting to see. kayakbird I'm not sure what you mean by that. Way back when, I tried some kind of color scheme based on percentage of total, but the problem is determining what "total" means, especially what "total recoverable" or "possible" might mean. There are many, many destroyed and "not found" marks in every county, so the percentage of stations recovered is always pretty low except for a few small counties or cities. Edited November 6, 2011 by holograph Quote Link to comment
kayakbird Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 (edited) Still thinking that a color for > 50% of possible for counties with < one hundred total would be interesting to see. kayakbird I'm not sure what you mean by that. Way back when, I tried some kind of color scheme based on percentage of total, but the problem is determining what "total" means, especially what "total recoverable" or "possible" might mean. There are many, many destroyed and "not found" marks in every county, so the percentage of stations recovered is always pretty low except for a few small counties or cities. I know that the number of Datasheet PID'S that we can do recoveries on is a moving target; but I'm not interested in five decimal point accuracy. The last time I ran a comparison back in April there were twenty four counties with at least 50% of their 2 to 100 total PID's recovered - taking it up to 150 total adds nine. Two are at 100% and for some reason Barry Co Missouri has 118 recoveries for 105 PID's. MEL Edited November 6, 2011 by kayakbird Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 6, 2011 Author Share Posted November 6, 2011 (edited) I know that the number of Datasheet PID'S that we can do recoveries on is a moving target; but I'm not interested in five decimal point accuracy. The last time I ran a comparison back in April there were twenty four counties with at least 50% of their 2 to 100 total PID's recovered - taking it up to 150 total adds nine. Two are at 100% and for some reason Barry Co Missouri has 118 recoveries for 105 PID's. MEL I'm still not sure if I understand what you were trying to see. I think you are saying, just look at counties that have 100 or fewer stations, and compute the percentage of those stations that were recovered. Only about a third of all counties have fewer than 100 stations. Here is a map showing all the counties in the lower 48 states, colored according to the percentage of marks that have been reported by GEOCAC in each county. edit: P.S. since the counts are are counts of *reports*, not counts of stations, there is some possibility that if people have made multiple reports for the same stations, the numbers will be skewed. For most counties, that isn't much of a problem. Edited November 6, 2011 by holograph Quote Link to comment
kayakbird Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 I know that the number of Datasheet PID'S that we can do recoveries on is a moving target; but I'm not interested in five decimal point accuracy. The last time I ran a comparison back in April there were twenty four counties with at least 50% of their 2 to 100 total PID's recovered - taking it up to 150 total adds nine. Two are at 100% and for some reason Barry Co Missouri has 118 recoveries for 105 PID's. MEL I'm still not sure if I understand what you were trying to see. I think you are saying, just look at counties that have 100 or fewer stations, and compute the percentage of those stations that were recovered. Only about a third of all counties have fewer than 100 stations. Here is a map showing all the counties in the lower 48 states, colored according to the percentage of marks that have been reported by GEOCAC in each county. edit: P.S. since the counts are are counts of *reports*, not counts of stations, there is some possibility that if people have made multiple reports for the same stations, the numbers will be skewed. For most counties, that isn't much of a problem. holograph, PERFECT! Thanks, Mike Quote Link to comment
Wintertime Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Here is a map showing all the counties in the lower 48 states, colored according to the percentage of marks that have been reported by GEOCAC in each county. Hi, Jim. I like this one. It's more interesting than the "reports per square mile" one to me because most of my hunting is done in Tuolumne County, which is mostly comprised of Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park and thus has huge swaths of land with no benchmarks. Thus even if geocachers recovered every still-existing benchmark in the county, the reports-per-square-mile map would still be blue (or at best, gray). I imagine that there are quite a few other counties in the West that could never be raised far on that map, either. By contrast, this percentage map is based on what can actually be achieved. Well, some counties may have more destroyed/missing marks than others, but all in all, this is a metric that GEOCAC reporters have some control over. Patty Quote Link to comment
ArtMan Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 Jim, Great work as always, Sorry if this question has come up before, but what software do you use to actually draw the maps? Something off-the-shelf or home-grown? Thanks again, ArtMan Quote Link to comment
+LSUFan Posted November 6, 2011 Share Posted November 6, 2011 I have nothing constructive to add to this conversation....but instead am just fussing at Jim. Looking at all the work he is doing with the maps here, I keep seeing that Red River Parish in LA has no GEOCAC recoveries. Since I am going to be 'near' there this Friday (like 40 miles is near), I am feeling some strange, uncontrollable urge to sweep down there and color it in. It's all Jim's fault. Quote Link to comment
+Harry Dolphin Posted November 7, 2011 Share Posted November 7, 2011 I have nothing constructive to add to this conversation....but instead am just fussing at Jim. Looking at all the work he is doing with the maps here, I keep seeing that Red River Parish in LA has no GEOCAC recoveries. Since I am going to be 'near' there this Friday (like 40 miles is near), I am feeling some strange, uncontrollable urge to sweep down there and color it in. It's all Jim's fault. Yup. JIm's fault. That's what took me to Sullivan County, New Hampshire... Quote Link to comment
VagabondsWV Posted November 7, 2011 Share Posted November 7, 2011 Heck, let me be the first to say I like ALL the maps. All are interesting and informative. While for me, darkening the colors of the counties is fun, the thing I enjoy most is getting a county out of the white zone. When travelling I always try to hit one if possible. Onec again,thanks for ALL the maps Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 7, 2011 Author Share Posted November 7, 2011 Sorry if this question has come up before, but what software do you use to actually draw the maps? Something off-the-shelf or home-grown? The download and analysis of the datasheets is done with a series of Perl programs that I wrote a number of years ago. The map images are created with an off-the-shelf GIS called Manifold, and I have a couple of Javascript scripts for Manifold that run to update the map data and generate the images. The datasheet archive resides in PostgreSQL and PostGIS, and I have some more Perl scripts which update the archive and extract the county ZIP files which get uploaded to the "data" page of the web site. Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 7, 2011 Author Share Posted November 7, 2011 ... I imagine that there are quite a few other counties in the West that could never be raised far on that map, either. By contrast, this percentage map is based on what can actually be achieved. Well, some counties may have more destroyed/missing marks than others, but all in all, this is a metric that GEOCAC reporters have some control over. All the maps give false emphasis to some group of counties. The original map using pure counts tends to favor large counties, hence the number of large counties in the West that are maxed out. The density map emphasizes populated urban areas, not only because that's where most geocachers hunt, but because the small urban counties tend to be more target rich. The percentage map favors undeveloped counties, because more of the marks are undisturbed and potentially recoverable. The merit of the original map is that it is easy to understand and simple for anyone to see how many recoveries are needed to change a color. That would be virtually impossible for the density map, and somewhat difficult for the percentage map without knowing how many total marks are in the database. Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 7, 2011 Author Share Posted November 7, 2011 (edited) I updated the percentage map to change a few things, in case anyone is wondering: The percentage calculation now is based on the number of PIDs that have been reported by GEOCAC, rather than the number of reports. The colors were changed so that the state and county lines are more visible. The map includes Alaska and Hawaii, which were omitted from the quick-and-dirty map that I first generated. The full size image is larger. Edited November 7, 2011 by holograph Quote Link to comment
+chiknlips45 Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Personally I'm a fan of the updated percentage map since we have several Benchmark enthusiasts in our area. This gives me an idea of how many virgin marks are still out there. Of course the original map is hard to top. Thanks again for providing us the information. Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 8, 2011 Author Share Posted November 8, 2011 (edited) Ok, I'll add the percentage map to the monthly gallery. The county summary data file has been revised also, and is available at this link. Those of you who like to paint by numbers can use the data file to calculate how many recoveries would be needed to change a county. Edited November 8, 2011 by holograph Quote Link to comment
kayakbird Posted November 8, 2011 Share Posted November 8, 2011 Those of you who like to paint by numbers can use the data file to calculate how many recoveries would be needed to change a county. Great, I just used up several hours that I needed to finish up a couple of Pulp Fiction books to return to the Moab Library by building an ordered state file (not complete yet) and calculating state %'s. Why am I not out in Canyonlands NP looking for brass?? kayakbird Quote Link to comment
+JL_HSTRE Posted November 10, 2011 Share Posted November 10, 2011 Good to see others have been active in FL. Looks like whenever I get up to the FL panhandle, I need to make sure to recover some BMs as that portion of the map is still empty. Quote Link to comment
+shorbird Posted November 10, 2011 Share Posted November 10, 2011 I like the new percentage maps and stats! Thanks for coming up with them. For the new colors on absolute numbers on the maps(>500 and > 1,000), I see them on the initial, smaller maps, but they disappear when I go to enlarge the maps. Thanks again for the new maps and stats!! You are keeping us all sharper with these refinements. Quote Link to comment
holograph Posted November 11, 2011 Author Share Posted November 11, 2011 I like the new percentage maps and stats! Thanks for coming up with them. For the new colors on absolute numbers on the maps(>500 and > 1,000), I see them on the initial, smaller maps, but they disappear when I go to enlarge the maps. Thanks again for the new maps and stats!! You are keeping us all sharper with these refinements. Yep, all I did was update the thumbnail maps and the full-page maps. The Zoomify map will have to wait until next month, unless I find the time to regenerate all the tiles for it. Quote Link to comment
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