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October Statistics


holograph

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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.

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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.

 

density_map_t.gif

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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

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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 by holograph
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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 by kayakbird
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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.

 

percentage_map_t.gif

 

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 by holograph
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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.

 

percentage_map_t.gif

 

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

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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

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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. :lol:

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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. :lol:

 

Yup. JIm's fault. That's what took me to Sullivan County, New Hampshire...

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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

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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.

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... 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.

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I updated the percentage map to change a few things, in case anyone is wondering:

 

  1. The percentage calculation now is based on the number of PIDs that have been reported by GEOCAC, rather than the number of reports.
  2. The colors were changed so that the state and county lines are more visible.
  3. The map includes Alaska and Hawaii, which were omitted from the quick-and-dirty map that I first generated.
  4. The full size image is larger.

 

percentage_map_t.gif

Edited by holograph
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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

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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. :)

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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.

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