Next was the type of caches placed from the beginning

This wasn't too surprising although I didn't realise there had been that many events already. Then it was split out by year.

This is a very encouraging trend for caching in Manitoba. Looks like a log growth curve.

Does cache placing slow down in the winter - you betcha. Do you think the May blitz had an impact? Check this out.

HOLY COW!!!!

Amazing!  You've put a whole lot of work into this Sean!  I'm extremely impressed.  I'm a fan of statistics.

I would be interested in having this permanently available on our web site.  Is this something you'd be willing to share there?

You're my hero!

I also looked at whether or not difficulty and terrain ratings were changing over the years and it seems a bit inconclusive on a cursory view. You can get the whole spreadsheet with all the various worksheets from here. Feel free to take it and massage out other stats that appear to support any number of viewpoints.

Now I should sleep Gnite all.

Quite the interesting.  I may only be a newbie cacher still, but it's still quite informative.  I KNEW we weren't being overrun with micros.  As said elsewhere... like 90% of the micros are either Mayors or Conquistas (which tend to still indeed be fun for the most part).

Yeah, safe assumtion caches placed in winter will be less.  Well... at least I'll be adding at least one in December (unless something else goes horribly wrong) :P.  Possibly two, but we'll see.

 

But as someone else mentioned, these would be interesting to see on the main mbga page.

Very impressive work you did Dragonfreys. You mentioned pivot tables and I shuddered. Glad you knew what you were doing. The stats revealed some interesting information.

Thanks for the hard work.

ertyu wrote:

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There is one problem though, many of the "micros" are listed as small caches.

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This is true (if one goes by my definitions... that being that an altoids container is a micro).  I asked on the geocaching.com board about that once, and the general consensus is that an altoids tin (regular size) was a small.

Bah... the first cache I'm putting out will be a 'small', but I could easily fit about 6-8 altoids tins INSIDE of it :P  I say we lobby that Altoids tins be called micros

ertyu wrote:

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There is one problem though, many of the "micros" are listed as small caches.

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You are welcome to take the database and correct it for your definition of a micro. I didn't do a regional analysis but I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of micros are within the perimeter, and I do believe you have that covered pretty well.  


-- Edited by Dragonfreys at 21:43, 2006-12-02

sam and lily wrote:

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Fascinating stats Dragonfreys! Thanks for sharing them with the rest of us .I found the density map of Winnipeg particularly interesting. I wonder now what a map of the home locations of cachers would reveal?? Where is the greater populace of cachers located and is there a direct correlation of cache placement density to cachers residences? That would be an obvious conclusion but is it so? Hmmmmm...

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I did think about doing some sort of cacher statistics but there are a couple of problems with the data from the pocket query. First cachers can and often do modify the name of who placed the cache so it can be challenging to link caches to unique cachers. This could be overcome with some filters and merging of aliases but then the other issue is privacy. There are a number of geostatisical tools designed to determine where someone lives by their activities (crime analysis in GIS has come a long ways in the past few years) and in most cases it would be even easier with geocaching because of the requirement of cache maintenance. So I left individual cache density analysis alone, but I suppose another approach would be to look at regional densities and then determine the number of cachers by region and see if they correlate. MBGA has a classification for members in Winnipeg, rest of Manitoba, and outside of Manitoba, so we can see if those ratios mesh.

Pocket queries do contain the "placed by" name but it also contains the unique "owner id" and unique name.

      <groundspeak:placed_by>Lil-Digger</groundspeak:placed_by>
      <groundspeak:owner id="234129">polarbeardiggers</groundspeak:owner>

 

ertyu wrote:

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The density correlates strongly with attractive cache land. Large tracks of public land that has many hiding spots, mostly parks.

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Ah yes, I did think of running a park vs cache density analysis but didn't get around to it. I think it could be quite interesting and helpful for future hiders.

Anticipating the next question might be "What's the stats with active caches?" this was generated. Note the abreviated cache types T-Traditional, M-multi, U-Unknown/Puzzle, V-Virtual, L-Letterbox, E-Event, C-CITO.

I love stats - especially with visualizations. DragonFreys are my heroes!

My favorite so far has to be the cache density, kernel density grid analysis. It shows all the sweet spots. I think we can give some of these spots names.

There’s the strong caching communities of Flin Flon and Cranberry Portage, the nmrider spot in Swan River, the DragonFreys spot at Onanole, the collaborative effort to make Brandon a spot on the GeoCaching map, the GEO30G/S class’ excursions to the Brandon Hills spot and lap and abeja2’s busy hiding to make Winkler\Morden and Carman GeoCaching holiday destinations. There’s also the relatively new The Redneck spot in Elm Creek, the kruzrrr zone around Portage la Prairie, the ginny212 party spot over Winnipeg Beach and junglehair & The Old Bat leaving there mark at camp Morton. And of course where it all started, the 1Q4J (along with their extended caching family, Explorer and Ramblin Rose and FreeS), hot spots in Morris and Steinbach.

The Provincial Government could take a lesson from Manitoba GeoCachers in promoting tourism in Manitoba’s vacation hotspot, The Whiteshell. Forget those expensive tour guides – just point travelers to GeoCaching.com.

And of course the really big hot spot created by a plethora of hiders that have placed a cache by every park, plaque, statue, historical monument, trail, or otherwise interesting location in Winnipeg, now a GeoCaching vacation destination.

My favourite is the Slippery spot over The Pas though :)

Well the provincial government recently updated their protected areas layer for Manitoba so out of curiousity I did some more spatial joins and came up with some more statistics for you stats lovers out there. Here's the map showing the types and general areas of protected public property in the province (there's a tongue twister).

Note that there are often provincial parks within provincial forests so caches may land in both, although technically the parks usually have higher levels of protection. Here's a table of protected areas and the number of caches by year placed in them. You can see which are favourite haunts of geocachers.

And here is the list of provincial forests that contain caches

-- Edited by Dragonfreys at 00:02, 2006-12-08