Geocaching Statistics

[+Danie Viljoen]

We decided to start a new statistics topic, primarily for South African and African caching statistics. The old one has become messy with broken links; I don't think it is practical to fix all of them. (Please let me know if there are specific old postings that you would like to see fixed.)

Edited July 18, 2017 by GlobalRat
Added link to old thread

[+TechnoNut]

I'm here.  Looking forward to the new thread and lots more stats.

[+Panters]

Thanks for the help, Stephen and Pete!  It is always interesting to follow the stats.  Thanks Danie!

[+Danie Viljoen]

Best attended Events (for the last year):

The following South African (and African) events for the year ending 23 July 2017 received the most Attended logs:

 1. GC6FYQT  Liesbeeck 9 Icon CITO (1 Oct)                 107 attended
 2. GC6M8BQ  Saturday Lunch Event (1 Oct)                   91 attended
 3. GC6FYRC  Liesbeek River 9 Icon walk Event (1 Oct)       89 attended
 4. GC6JBQX  Cape Town 2016 Official Opening Event (1 Oct)  80 attended
 5. GC6JDT3  Octoberfest  (1 Oct)                           69 attended
 6. GC6JDRB  Eneveraa 50/50 Event                           65 attended
 7. GC6JRXC  Cape Town 2016 Official Closing Event (2 Oct)  64 attended
 8. GC6JDNQ  Noon Gun @ 12h00  (1 Oct)                      53 attended
 9. GC6MMD9  "Heading" off to the Waterfront (30 Sept)      50 attended
10. GC6M8C4  Sunday Lunch Event (2 Oct)                     49 attended

These events are all associated with the 2016 MEGA in Cape Town.

There were a total of 300 events in South Africa during the year, and these received a total of 4239 Attended logs. The median was 11 logs per event (and the minimum was 1!)

For the whole of Africa there were 694 events during the year, and they received a total of 6381 Attended logs. The median for Africa was 7 logs per event.

43% of the events in Africa during the last year were in South Africa, but South Africa received 66% of the Attended logs.

[+ChrisDen]

Just a note on cache density. I believe Port Elizabeth now has the greatest cache density for all the areas that stats were given for

[+Danie Viljoen]

Events per day of the week:

The following graphs are for South African events of all types, for the year ending 23 July 2017.

No surprise here, Saturday is clearly the most popular day for an event. Only Monday stands out as particularly unpopular.

 

The average attendance per event per day of the week is quite interesting:

Clearly weekend events are attended better, but for some unknown reason Thursdays (and not Mondays as one would expect from the previous graph) are bad for attendance.

Edited July 25, 2017 by Danie Viljoen

[+Danie Viljoen]

2 hours ago, ChrisDen said:

Just a note on cache density. I believe Port Elizabeth now has the greatest cache density for all the areas that stats were given for

It all depends on the size of the area you look at. For small areas (1km radius) I suspect Pretoria still has the highest density, but for larger areas (5 - 10km radius) you may be right. There was a fairly recent posting about this in the old statistics thread, but I'll update it soon.

[+Danie Viljoen]

On 7/25/2017 at 7:13 AM, ChrisDen said:

Just a note on cache density. I believe Port Elizabeth now has the greatest cache density for all the areas that stats were given for

I checked the numbers and yes, thanks to no fewer than 124 new caches in the area during the last year alone, Port Elizabeth now has the highest densities for 1km, 5km and 10km radii!

• 1km radius: 44 active caches around GC6XCZ4 - Snail Trail #12
• 5km radius: 363 active caches around GC4G7MT - Gentlemen's Game
• 10km radius: 720 active caches around GC5N5V8 - Whistle Stop 2

Second place:

• 1km: GC6ANHF - Equestria - Altzheimers (in Pretoria), with 41 caches
• 5km: GC33PME - Enjoy the Shade (in Cape Town), with 300 caches
• 10km: GC34AYW - Pagoda-trol (in Pretoria), with 622 caches

[+Danie Viljoen]

Highest cache concentration

I was curious to know what and where the smallest circle is that contains at least half of all the active South African caches. It turns out to be a circle with a radius of 324.8km around GC2QPPM - Sandspruit, in Mpumalanga, not far from Volksrust. Not where I expected it to be! (50% of the caches are in 27% of the area of the country.)

The density for the whole of South Africa is 0.0118 caches per square km, or 84.8 square km per cache.

For the blue circle it is 0.0271 caches per square km, or 46.1 square km per cache.

For the rest (the other half), it is 0.0081 caches per square km, or 123.5 square km per cache.

If all the caches in South Africa were distributed evenly, the distance between caches would be 9.9km.

 

Edited August 1, 2017 by Danie Viljoen

[+Danie Viljoen]

More cache densities:

 

The following graph shows the cache densities (number of caches per square kilometer):

 

The following graph shows the average distance (in km) between caches (if all the caches in the province were distributed evenly):

 

Lastly, the population divided by the number of caches per province:

:

[+Danie Viljoen]

Highest number of caches vs. radius:

The following graph provides a summary of the highest cache densities as a function of the area (or radius):

It means the following:

• 100% of the active South African caches are within 912.1km from a common point (Boshof 1 in the Free State) (I excluded the Marion Island caches.)
• 50% of the caches are within 324.8km from a common point (Sandspruit in Mpumalanga)
• 33% of the caches are within 223km from postbox woltemade in Mpumalanga
• 25% of the caches are within 90.8km from Mining Series 6: REGM in Gauteng
• 10% of the caches are within 22.8km from Grow Wild in Gauteng

Port Elizabeth has the highest densities up to a radius of 11.4km, after which Pretoria takes over up to about 20km. Then it is Johannesburg until at least 50km, after which the West Rand is the center point up to at least 100km. At 150km it is Pretoria again.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Danie Viljoen

[+ChrisDen]

I assume we will shortly see stats to see if SA received it's fair share of the new virtuals ;-)

[+GlobalRat]

1 hour ago, ChrisDen said:

I assume we will shortly see stats to see if SA received it's fair share of the new virtuals ;-)

We'll only know in a year's time I guess 

[+Danie Viljoen]

3 hours ago, ChrisDen said:

I assume we will shortly see stats to see if SA received it's fair share of the new virtuals ;-)

I just read the blog entry on the new virtuals - apparently they are not going to publish a list of names. The only way we shall be able to know is to see if and when new virtual caches are published. One can only hope that these virtuals will not be wasted. I hope they use them in places where normal caches are not allowed, such as the Kruger Park.

I wish they would publish their reward algorithm; in my view it could have a positive effect - it will help to know what to aim for.

[+Enigma_DKL]

17 hours ago, Danie Viljoen said:

I wish they would publish their reward algorithm; in my view it could have a positive effect - it will help to know what to aim for.

100% agree

[+GlobalRat]

On ‎2017‎-‎08‎-‎26 at 7:10 AM, Wh00 said:

100% agree

Slightly OT, but in response.  I think we should be happy that Groundspeak have allowed the publishing of a limited number of virtuals.  Of course, I’m curious about the algorithm but I’m equally comfortable that it remains a secret.  If Groundspeak do repeat this in the future, the algorithm would likely be changed or tweaked and thus knowing the algorithm would be irrelevant. 

Looking forward to the virtuals that do get published.  Perhaps a non-subscriptive thread discussing where the community would like to see potential virtuals would be helpful to throw around some ideas for those that were rewarded? Anyone? He says to empty space.....

Personally I would like to see virtuals in places which do not lend themselves to traditional caches, but I’m sure there are many great ideas out there.

 

Back to the topic.  Just looking at the MP cache numbers compared to EC.  Looks like the provinces were fairly neck to neck until about 2007 and then EC started on a path of exponential growth.  Clearly a strong and growing caching community there.  What’s happened to the peeps in MP? So much open space!?  It is of course half the size of EC.  Perhaps you have posted this before Danie, is there a comparative graph of cumulative growth rate of current active caches over the years by province?

[+Danie Viljoen]

21 hours ago, GlobalRat said:

is there a comparative graph of cumulative growth rate of current active caches over the years by province?

The following two graphs show the year-on-year growth in total (not only active) cache numbers per province.

On a logarithmic scale:

And on a linear scale:

Since 2013 the Eastern Cape has been the star. The last two years the Northern Cape and Western Cape have not lagged far behind the Eastern Cape. 

The Free State and Limpopo, on the other hand, are dying

[+GlobalRat]

Is it NW or MP just beneath WC?  But difficult to separate NW and MP.

 

If I read this correctly in 2016 the year on year growth rate by province exceeded the total RSA growth rate in the following provinces: EC, NC, WC, NW/MP

 

Purely from a size perspective, one would think that Limpopo has a lot of caching opportunities.  But smaller caching community I guess.  Also much of the land that isn't occupied by a village of sorts is private game or farm land in large parts of the province.

 

For me the most untapped province is the NC, but then again I have an affinity to the semi arid and open landscape it has to offer.

[+Danie Viljoen]

Sorry if the graphs are not clear. The growth numbers for 2016 are:

1. EC: 26.4%
2. NC: 25.8%
3. WC: 19.3%
4. NW: 17.9%
5. RSA: 15.6%
6. Mpumalanga: 15.6%
7. Gauteng: 12.5%
8. KZN: 12.0%
9. Limpopo: 6.2%
10. FS: 3.5%

There is a very strong correlation between the number of caches and the number of cachers in a geographical area. That certainly plays a major role in the low cache numbers (and growth) in provinces like Limpopo.

 

Edited August 29, 2017 by Danie Viljoen

[+Danie Viljoen]

Cache number growth per province:

(All caches were counted, not only active ones.)

[+Danie Viljoen]

Most found caches:

The South African caches with the most finds for the year ending 31 August 2017:

 1. GC31WXR  Table Mountain Travel Bug Hotel  CapeDoc        267 finds
 2. GCMYYZ   Table Top Trove                  AndyT1         209 finds
 3. GC6JCHV  V&A Waterfront: Bay Vista        SawaSawa       201 finds
 4. GC37VF3  Tip of Africa                    Zephyr2        169 finds
    GC62NFH  Birth of a gentle giant          scubie999      169 finds
 6. GCVDHN   Sailors' Star                    vespax         149 finds
 7. GC2CG7X  Hiddingh Security TB Hotel       mr panda       144 finds
 8. GC6FYR7  Cape Town 2016 Traditional       Team Neil      129 finds
    GC77E    Cape Agulhas                     Peter Scholtz  129 finds
10. GC6FYQJ  Cape Town 2016 Multi             Team Neil      125 finds

 

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 1:

The following graph shows the total number of cachers who have found at least one cache in South Africa:

(These are all full years, ending on 31 August).

We experienced a drop of 22% (more than a fifth) in the number of cachers during the past year, back to the level of 2014.

[+Panters]

That is worrying indeed.  What would be the reason for this decline?

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 2:

We have always had a very high fall-out rate of new cachers - most new cachers drop out after a handful of finds. This loss of cacher numbers has always been compensated for by an exponentially growing number of new cachers, but not any more:

The number of first-time cachers in the year ending 31 August 2017 is 30% fewer than the previous year, and 31% fewer than in 2015. That is a loss of almost a third!

[+Carbon Hunter]

5 hours ago, Danie Viljoen said:

Worrying trends, part 2:

 

The number of first-time cachers in the year ending 31 August 2017 is 30% fewer than the previous year, and 31% fewer than in 2015. That is a loss of almost a third!

So what can be done to reverse this?

Newbie events (bring a friend) - are organisations like the boy Scouts now saturated - do we need to get support from HQ to promote caching in Africa - what about neighbouring countries - surely Zim & Namibia in particular could do with some growth.

 

Do we need cache hiders of the ilk or Crystal Fairy and TechnoNut again to saturate areas?

 

What about a province like E Cape - with the large growth in cache numbers - have we seen an associated growth in cachers?

 

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 3:

This graph shows the percentage of South African cachers active in a specific year, who found their first cache in that same year. Another way to look at it is to see it as the fall-out rate - if the graph hovers around 63% it implies that 63% of the cachers don't last more than a year. (I am always amazed to see how high and how constant this number is.)

Normally a downward trend would be a good thing, because it means that a larger percentage of the cachers made it to more than a year. For the last two years, however, the reason is because the number of new cachers dropped faster than the total number of cachers (shown in parts 1 & 2).

As to the reason for the recent dramatic drop in cacher numbers - I can only speculate. I suspect one of the reasons may be accessibility. Nine years ago when I started, one needed to buy a dedicated GPSr which wasn't cheap. Mobile internet access was the exception, not the rule. The typical cacher in the early years was a surveyor or engineer!

As smart phones became more affordable the number of cachers grew. The last few years almost anyone who was interested could start caching with a mobile phone, without incurring any extra costs. I suspect most of the potential cachers have already tried it by now (and found they did not really like it long-term). My prediction is that the numbers will start to stabilize soon.

[+GlobalRat]

21 hours ago, Carbon Hunter said:

<snip>

Do we need cache hiders of the ilk or Crystal Fairy and TechnoNut again to saturate areas?

Edit: Strikethrough as not referencing the specific cachers.

Not just about saturating areas.  Yes, one needs caches in areas where there are none or few, so these need to be seeded.  However, these should be done with good quality caches where possible rather than just bombing an area with numbers and LPC's.

But yes, agree... the old adage.... "build it they will come".  I suppose a good mix is required of types of caches and placements, as different types appeal to different cachers.

Edited September 7, 2017 by GlobalRat

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 4:

The number of finds in South Africa during the past year is 16.5% down from the previous year. (438 finds/day vs. 524 finds/day in 2016 equals 85 fewer finds/day in 2017.)

Edited September 8, 2017 by Danie Viljoen

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 5:

The number of new caches in South Africa in 2017 is 17.2% down from the previous year. (8.3 new caches/day in 2016 vs. 6.9 new caches/day in 2017)

[+GlobalRat]

I think this particular trend (part 5) is not of great concern….yet.  If one considers how many unfound caches there are for local cachers, there’s a lot of caching to do.  I would wager that the majority of local cachers have only found 5% or less of available SA caches.  For the more avid cachers and those long in the tooth, the majority would probably still fall under 15%.  Even the likes of iPajero have only done about 70%, and I think after them the next set of cachers would fall somewhere around the 30% mark.  Perhaps more of a consolidation phase.

 

Having said that, interesting to see that there appears to be a correlation between number of finds and new cache hides.  Does this imply cachers only like to find new caches and not old ones?

 

It would be interesting to see the graph of number of new CO’s per year over time.  After all the game’s growth is highly dependent on the entry of new CO’s over time.  Actually I think an analysis of CO’s, number of, average number of caches owned etc. over time might prove interesting.

[+ChrisDen]

Are we not getting worried too early? 2012 showed a decrease and them look what happened after that. 

2011 was high because of the GPS series 

Edited September 12, 2017 by ChrisDen

[+Danie Viljoen]

43 minutes ago, ChrisDen said:

Are we not getting worried too early? 2012 showed a decrease and them look what happened after that. 

2011 was high because of the GPS series 

I agree, by itself I would not be overly concerned by the decrease of new caches in the last year. It is a much more "noisy" metric than the others, but in combination with the other trends, especially the number of cachers and the number of new cachers, I expect it to drop further. 

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 7:

On 9/12/2017 at 10:11 AM, GlobalRat said:

It would be interesting to see the graph of number of new CO’s per year over time.  After all the game’s growth is highly dependent on the entry of new CO’s over time. 

The graph above shows the number of South African first-time cache owners per year, ending on 31 August of each year. The number for this year is 35% down from last year, and 50% down from the peak in 2013!

 

[+ChrisDen]

Is it possible to get the stats (only one of the above) by province? I would like to see if it is a national trend of if there is one area that is a major contributor. 

[+GlobalRat]

Delving into the CO stats on active caches I found the following (Danie, I'm sure you can come up with some pretty pictures)

If one looks at the current active caches (14611), there are a total of 1644 CO's.

44% (719 CO's) only own one cache, 5% of caches

PARETO RULES: 80% of the CO population (1321)  only accounts for 20% of the active caches (3017), these CO's own 7 or less listings

90 CO's account for 50% of the total caches, and these 90 CO's have 40 or more active caches.

60% of the caches are held by 18% of the CO's, and these are by CO's owning 7-90 caches

This 60% is roughly split in half by 30% of caches being owned by CO's owning between 8-39 (233 CO's) caches and 30% of being owned by CO's owning between 40-90 (71 CO's) caches

17 CO's have more than 100 caches, totaling 2790 caches - 19% of caches

Max is 300 - iPajero - no surprise

In summary

% caches: #caches owned by CO

5%: 1

10%: 2-5

5%: 5-7 

30%: 8-39

30%: 40-90

20%: >90

 

None of this is overly surprising in terms of trends etc., except perhaps that I would have hoped that the 100 cache marker was a lot less, i.e. that the 19% that we depend on the 100+ CO's (only 17 of them) only accounted for say 10% of all caches.

 

When plotting when the single CO's placed their caches over time, the graph looks identical to the Part 5 Danie posted above going all the way back to 2001.  So these are long term single CO's, not new CO's, i.e. the conversion rate from being a single CO to a multiple CO is very poor.  Perhaps again this is excited noobs who place their first cache and then leave.  Looking through the list of names, there are a few that I know are around and caching, but many I don't recognize.  Of course I've only looked at active caches and didn't exclude events, so some of these CO's may have placed more than one cache over time, but I suspect the overall trend will still be true even if taken into account.

It still tells me that more new CO's are required, as it seems only a small % of those will convert into owners of more than one cache, and somehow we need more CO's to enter the meaty portion of the scale.  It's unreasonable to expect a whole bunch more 100+ CO's to suddenly arrive.

  

 

Edited September 13, 2017 by GlobalRat

[+Danie Viljoen]

18 hours ago, ChrisDen said:

Is it possible to get the stats (only one of the above) by province? I would like to see if it is a national trend of if there is one area that is a major contributor. 

The following graph shows the (normalized) cachers per province over time:

All the provinces peaked either in 2015 (Gauteng, KZN, Free State, Limpopo) or 2016 (Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, North West, Mpumalanga), and all 9 provinces show a subsequent decrease. The Northern Cape has the lowest decrease of 4.6%, and North West and KZN have the largest decrease (of 30.4% and 30.9% respectively).

[+Danie Viljoen]

18 hours ago, GlobalRat said:

PARETO RULES: 80% of the CO population (1321)  only accounts for 20% of the active caches (3017), these CO's own 7 or less listings

I could not resist the temptation to put this on a graph:

A perfect example of the Pareto principle, indeed!

[+GlobalRat]

Some CO numbers

 

[+ChrisDen]

This could make an interesting article in the next GOSA magazine.

 

One wonders if there is a drop as people stop power trails and concentrate more on quality caches. I would hope so.

Edited September 14, 2017 by ChrisDen

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worrying trends, part 8:

This graph shows the total number of South African cache owners who placed a cache in a specific year. The number is 17% down from 2016, and 26.5% down from the peak in 2013.

[+GlobalRat]

I think the pending Mega will boost numbers a bit again in the coming year

[+Carbon Hunter]

5 hours ago, GlobalRat said:

I think the pending Mega will boost numbers a bit again in the coming year

But 2012 and 2014 did not show much of a spike? So unless it is a targeted strategy for 2018 MEGA not sure how it will change?

[+GlobalRat]

16 hours ago, Carbon Hunter said:

But 2012 and 2014 did not show much of a spike? So unless it is a targeted strategy for 2018 MEGA not sure how it will change?

Good point... had my years mixed up.  I guess the PS phase gave boosts in certain years. 

On the upside, for the majority of us there are still 1000's of caches to be found.  Thinking back to the mid "noughties" where there were literally zero unfound caches and we had to urge fellow cachers to hide a cache just so that there would be something to find.  Currently, supply is outstripping demand, so very far from a crisis yet.

[+Carbon Hunter]

2 hours ago, GlobalRat said:

Good point... had my years mixed up.  I guess the PS phase gave boosts in certain years. 

On the upside, for the majority of us there are still 1000's of caches to be found.  Thinking back to the mid "noughties" where there were literally zero unfound caches and we had to urge fellow cachers to hide a cache just so that there would be something to find.  Currently, supply is outstripping demand, so very far from a crisis yet.

PS??? What is that?

Agreed - yes we all still have 1000s to find.

 

I guess the concern is that sustainability is showing a rverse direction - and for the past few years we've seena  downward trend - while countries like New Zealand and France are still seeing growth.

 

E Cape is pleasing to see - so we need to learn in the likes of WC; GP and KZN

[+GlobalRat]

11 minutes ago, Carbon Hunter said:

PS??? What is that?

Power Series/Trails

[+GlobalRat]

I'm not sure Danie can come up with the numbers but I suspect if we could look at the average number of Found logs per active cache per year, South African caches would fall behind the curve compared to similar caching countries.  Looking at all logs on a cache, on average it is less than 20 logs per year per active cache (that's all logs).

Just looking at the 20 surviving caches from 2001, these have an average just over 12 logs per year in South Africa.  Remember, that is ALL logs.  If I look at the same for UK caches, they average almost 48 logs per year.  So 2001 caches in SA are under-subscribed by a factor of 4 compared to UK caches.  Sure we have a smaller cacher population, but IMO we have a high ratio of caches to cachers and hence the slow down.  I’ve heard it from more than one foreign cacher, they are surprised by the few number of finds on our older caches. 

The graph below looks at the average number of logs per year cache placed.  Shows that cachers tend to favour newer caches as opposed to the old caches.  I’m guessing that accessibility to caches is a major contributor.  Older caches tended to be placed in more remote places on top of hills etc. as was the fashion of the day.  More recent caches tend to be more urban and park and grabs.

 

[+ChrisDen]

There is a post on the project GC forum about the decline in caches in Australia 

[+Danie Viljoen]

20 hours ago, GlobalRat said:

if we could look at the average number of Found logs per active cache per year, South African caches would fall behind the curve compared to similar caching countries. 

With caches getting archived and unarchived all the time, I am curious to know how you calculated the number of active caches in previous years? (I used to record the number of active caches every few months, but lost all of it in a recent disk crash.)

[+GlobalRat]

10 minutes ago, Danie Viljoen said:

With caches getting archived and unarchived all the time, I am curious to know how you calculated the number of active caches in previous years? (I used to record the number of active caches every few months, but lost all of it in a recent disk crash.)

I just took the caches that are currently active, and viewed their logs.  Anything more sounds complex and I doubt it would give a significantly different result.

Edited September 21, 2017 by GlobalRat

[+Danie Viljoen]

Worldwide decline:

I got the following numbers from Project GC:

The Finds, Hidden and Cachers columns show the percentage change from 2016 to 2017.

I don't agree with the numbers, but comparing different countries one can see that there is nothing unusual about South Africa. We are on the high (low?) side w.r.t. the decline in the numbers of new caches hidden and the number of cachers, but New Zealand is even worse. (For some reason it makes me feel better... )

Even the U.S.A. with almost 50% of the world's caches is comparable to South Africa.