Useless? Maine Cache Stats

Anyone that has visited my website knows I periodically update a page which has the stats for all the active caches in Maine. I have played around some today and have some information which includes all caches ever approved by gc.com to date. (My data may not be 100% accurate, but should be close)

The following graph shows the Rate of new cache approvals per month.

http://www.bytethebullet.com/geocach...ainecaches.jpg

It's very easy to see our seasonal trends! August 2003 was the busiest month, with 54 newly approved caches.

Other information you might not know:

Maine's Oldest cache is the Fort Williams Cache (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache...ls.aspx?ID=296), which is 3 years, 5 months, and 27 days old.

There are 14 active Maine caches that have yet to be logged. There are a few more that have DNF logs, but still not found. The oldest ones have been waiting nearly 11 months for a visitor. Who wants a FTF?

To date there have been 598 caches approved in Maine. 74 of those have been archived, leaving 524 active caches in Maine (Imcluding those temporarily disabled).

There have been 729 Caches submitted to gc.com - so that means 131 have been rejected. That's close to having ony 1 in 7 caches being approved and viewable by us memebers. I wonder if that means only 1 in 7 of us read the cache submission guidelines???

Here are the stats for all the approved Maine caches

Total Caches: 598

Caches by type:
Traditional Cache: 518 (86.6%)
Multi-Cache: 41 (6.9%)
Virtual Cache: 25 (4.2%)
Letterbox Hybrid: 3 (.5%)
Event Cache: 3 (.5%)
Unknown Cache: 6 (1%)
Cache In Trash Out Event: 2 (.3%)

Caches by container:
Micro: 26 (4.3%)
Regular: 503 (84.1%)
Large: 3 (.5%)
Other: 23 (3.8%)
Virtual: 23 (3.8%)
Not chosen: 20 (3.3%)

Cache Ratings:
Difficulty:
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 5
Average: 1.9
Terrain:
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 5
Average: 2.2

Cache Age:
Oldest Cache: 2001-01-02
Youngest Cache: 2004-06-25
Average hidden date: 2003-03-16

Quote:

Originally Posted by brdad

Cache Ratings:
Difficulty:
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 5
Average: 1.9
Terrain:
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 5
Average: 2.2

These stats are very interesting. I'd love to see the number of caches at each difficulty rating if that's possible.

There was a guy in Southern New Jersey who used to run a stats page on the caches in his area. He somehow was able to gather the info from the gc.com site and then crunch it to list all sorts of stats including the number of finds logged per day for each county and then the totals for all of the southern counties combined. It was cool to see what were historically the busiest caching days of the year.

He even went so far as to keep track, county by county, a list of which users had the most finds logged, in decenting order. And then he also had the totals listed again for the whole southern part of the state. Unfortunately he got tired of running it or something and took the site down recently.

-Team Trout

A lot of people used to scrounge data from the web site, which dragged it down tons. They have since prohibited doing that and stopped most of it.

Anyway, I parse my information using my pocket queries using the Watcher program I mentioned in another thread here (It has a stats feature)

Since it does not break down difficulty/terrain for stats, I'd have to manuaully do each possibility - which comes out to 100 possible combinations (because each category has ?/1/1.5/2/2.5/3/3.5/4/4.5/5 for possibilities.

Incidently, ?? is a rating for older caches whose hiders did not specify diff/terr. Maine has no ?? for any of it's caches.

I did do a quick run of 1/1s, and there are 97 of those, and 2 5/5s. Unfortunately, I am betting many of the 1/1s are under rated because a terrain of 1 should indicate it is handicapped accessible. I've done quite a few 1/1s which definitely did not meet that criteria. As for the two 5/5's..

Horse Mnt. (GC4701) by Msansanbi (5/5)

Since there is no puzzle or multiple stages involved, the difficulty on this cache rests soley with the hidden container. I can't say as I have never been there, but it would have to be hidden pretty durn good to be a 5.

Sights to Bewhole (GC93F0) by Rslyfox (5/5)

I really don't think this one could be a 5 for difficulty, unless finding the answers to the virts are real tough. Possible, not probable.
The terrain ... never been there (yet), but it's close to a 5, probably at least a 4.5

Incidently, if you want to see what caches are rated for each possibility, get Watcher and see for yourself!

Quote:

Originally Posted by brdad

Incidently, if you want to see what caches are rated for each possibility, get Watcher and see for yourself!

Thanks for the tip! I'll give it a try when time allows.

-Team Trout

Thanks, brdad

Very interesting information! I love statistics.