+KonstantinMMRR Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 I enjoy looking at the personal statistics kept for geocaching. I think one important part is missing. There should be an average latitude and longitude for all caches found by that member. As an example, if we regularly find caches near and around our home area, the average center point would be at about our home. Then, when we find a few caches across the country, that would pull our center point over some. It seems like this would be easy for the website to calculate. What are your thoughts? Thank you. Quote Link to comment
+MartyBartfast Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 Groundspeak don't provide this info, but project-GC does, go here https://project-gc.com/Statistics/ProfileStats and scroll down to this bit: 1 Quote Link to comment
+hzoi Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 (edited) 1 hour ago, MartyBartfast said: Groundspeak don't provide this info, but project-GC does Indeed. So does the GSAK FindStatGen macro, though I think they differ slightly on their calculations. There's another GSAK macro called Centroid Track (or something similar) that will actually create a map of your centroid and how it shifted day to day. You can see ours bouncing around Germany for the first few months, then it started to arc its away to the USA when we got over 100 finds in Texas, then it started coming back. Then it started going to the US again and shifted tracks a few times every time we moved. And now we are back in Germany - so it's starting to curve its way back. If I remember, I'll post a screen shot with the correct macro name. Edited April 16, 2019 by hzoi Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 48 minutes ago, hzoi said: Indeed. So does the GSAK FindStatGen macro, though I think they differ slightly on their calculations. There's another GSAK macro called Centroid Track (or something similar) that will actually create a map of your centroid and how it shifted day to day. You can see ours bouncing around Germany for the first few months, then it started to arc its away to the USA when we got over 100 finds in Texas, then it started coming back. Then it started going to the US again and shifted tracks a few times every time we moved. And now we are back in Germany - so it's starting to curve its way back. If I remember, I'll post a screen shot with the correct macro name. I don't know how it's calculated but mine is 183 miles from my home location and near Ottawa, Canada. I have never found a cache in Canada. Quote Link to comment
+niraD Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 1 hour ago, NYPaddleCacher said: I don't know how it's calculated The algorithm that makes the most sense to me (which I think was mentioned by fizzymagic years ago) would be to consider the locations of your finds as points in 3-dimensional space. Then those points are averaged in 3-dimensional space, and a line is projected from the center of the earth, through that average point, and through the surface of the earth. That point on the surface of the earth is the centroid. But I have no idea how any of these systems calculate the centroid without getting weird results when someone has finds that straddle W/E 180°, or with certain other edge cases. Quote Link to comment
+31BMSG Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 1 hour ago, NYPaddleCacher said: I don't know how it's calculated but mine is 183 miles from my home location and near Ottawa, Canada. I have never found a cache in Canada. Here is a good explanation, http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?s=&showtopic=202244&view=findpost&p=3613478 Quote Link to comment
+cerberus1 Posted April 16, 2019 Share Posted April 16, 2019 5 hours ago, KonstantinMMRR said: I enjoy looking at the personal statistics kept for geocaching. I think one important part is missing. There should be an average latitude and longitude for all caches found by that member. As an example, if we regularly find caches near and around our home area, the average center point would be at about our home. Then, when we find a few caches across the country, that would pull our center point over some. It seems like this would be easy for the website to calculate. What are your thoughts? Maybe it's just me, but it seems when other, third-party sites are already doing a function (stats especially...), there's often little return for this site to go through the work of creating their own version. 1 Quote Link to comment
+KonstantinMMRR Posted April 16, 2019 Author Share Posted April 16, 2019 Thank you. I will try these websites you refer to. Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 20 hours ago, 31BMSG said: Here is a good explanation, http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?s=&showtopic=202244&view=findpost&p=3613478 Thanks. Not that I've read that post I am recalling that it was related to using a "great circle" route. Quote Link to comment
+NYPaddleCacher Posted April 17, 2019 Share Posted April 17, 2019 18 hours ago, cerberus1 said: Maybe it's just me, but it seems when other, third-party sites are already doing a function (stats especially...), there's often little return for this site to go through the work of creating their own version. I have on a few occasions suggested that GS get out of the statistics system reporting business and allow users to integrate the output of third-party sites onto their statistics tab. That said, I've been paying for a premium membership for 12 years and don't want to see GS get into a mode that they'll just let third party sites implement functionality if its something that a significant number of users want, especially when some of those 3rd party sites have an additional cost or require a specific hardware/software platform. 3 Quote Link to comment
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