geoscores - thoughts

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 30 December 04 5:52 pm

All this talk of find counts ... I reckon it would be more interesting if the difficulty and terrain ratings were taken into account. A simple way would be to add up the diff and/or terr ratings instead of counting each single find.

For example, a Get Smart (diff 5) would be equivalent to 5 x difficulty 1 finds.

- R

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 30 December 04 6:45 pm

this gave us an idea for a quick bit of coding. let's call it a geoscore!

yikes!

we're happy to continue refining this in the geocaching australia website forum if you wish

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 30 December 04 6:48 pm

i! you read my mind. I was very close to emailing you today about doing this very thing.

Kudos!

- Rog
PS Still on for your place for NYE?

Papa Bear_Left · Post by **Papa Bear_Left** » 30 December 04 8:27 pm

ideology wrote:this gave us an idea for a quick bit of coding. let's call it a geoscore!

yikes!

we're happy to continue refining this in the geocaching australia website forum if you wish

I like it! It becomes a little meaningless eventually, as experienced cachers basically do whatever new local caches come along, rather than picking and choosing, but it's still a fun statistic.

Eventually, it'd be great to set dates for this stat. I'd love to see what our NSW rating vs our overall or travelling ratings are, for instance...
However, I understand the complexity of the coding for this, and I think i!'s time could be far better spent elsewhere!

Geof · Post by **Geof** » 30 December 04 9:59 pm

You could also( I like the above idea too) put in catagories... say a list for level 1/2

another for 3/4

and another for 4.5/5 for the diehards

.

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 30 December 04 10:06 pm

we've split this discussion from a thread about a certain slime-covered cacher reaching 300 finds

the questions are:
- whether a score like this makes sense
- if so, what should it be? eg what is currently written: difficulty x terrain of finds, or should it include hides, etc?

oh, and before anyone asks:

Code: Select all

maccamob                                 |    4,396
 Biggles Bear                             |    2,691
 muzza                                    |    2,306
 dak's Emu Mob                            |    2,047
 Derringer                                |    2,032
 Tangles                                  |    1,920
 The Rats                                 |    1,860
 Sallies                                  |    1,604
 tofska                                   |    1,572
 Swampgecko                               |    1,428
 Ideology                                 |    1,367
 Team Chaos                               |    1,329
 gahpee                                   |    1,233
 rediguana                                |    1,202
 Team Crackers                            |    1,155
 TeamAstro                                |    1,134
 kiwideb                                  |    1,123
 Bear_Left                                |    1,109
 Liz and Bruce                            |    1,089
 Rabbitto                                 |    1,066
 Slider & Smurf                           |    1,028
 Team Piggy                               |      973
 Freddo                                   |      970
 Leek                                     |      947
 Alan-san                                 |      908
 richary                                  |      869
 pprass                                   |      861
 Mind Socket                              |      846
 Skippy&Lambchops                         |      839
 Team Unicycle                            |      836
 Nomads                                   |      835
 TEAM LANDCRUISER                         |      834
 Team Webguy                              |      803
 Rav 4 Raiders                            |      787
 EcoTeam                                  |      786
 Quasar                                   |      766
 teamkittens                              |      762

Team Piggy · Post by **Team Piggy** » 30 December 04 10:49 pm

So I guess if you dont log your finds on Geo.com your out of the race

swampgecko · Post by **swampgecko** » 30 December 04 11:34 pm

Actually, as nice as it is to be in the top ten via the weighting/scoring, this should only be taken as a guide, and with a large dose of salt too.

Why? Because people like Tangles and a few others haven't imported the complete list of their finds into the system. Another notable tally that is missing is The 2 Dogs, thier gc.com.au page only lists 168 finds where as they have a tally of 405 finds currently on the secondary site.

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 31 December 04 9:22 am

George!

Is the algorithm sum(diff * terr) or sum(diff + terr)? I'd assumed the latter, but the former might be more sensible. I might have a play with that data you sent a while back to try out some different approaches (I'll keep simplicity in mind).

Once this is out of beta, it would be interesting to see it applied alongside other find counts (eg monthly leaderboards).

Love your work, as always,
- Rog

Post by **caughtatwork** » 31 December 04 10:39 am

Interesting statistics.

I wonder if a multiplier should also be applied for the type of cache.

eg.
1 for a locationless
1.5 for a virtual
2 for a traditional
2.5 for a mystery
2.5 for a webcam
3 for a multi

Let me give you my thoughts.

The start point is 1 for a locationless. If I started traditional at 1 and locationless / virtual at (say) .25 and .5 then if you log a locationless or virtual you could find your score going backwards. Probably not a good thing for the stats whores.

A locationless may be easy enough to do from your home so it attracts a standard score.

A virtual doesn't mean finding a box, but is generally something large enough to spot from a distance away. Sure finding some of the clues to answer the questions may be tricky but again, it can be done (generally) from your home, so attracts a slightly higher than standard score.

A traditional is probably the base line so a multiplier of 2 sets the base line (see above as to why this isn't 1).

A mystery may mean working out the starting point / details from additional clues some of which can be done at home, some of which need to be done in the field. Additional search time and travel time may be involved, so a higher multiplier applies for extra effort.

A webcam cache involves finding a location and then finding someone who can snap the picture, so coordincation of additional people to help with the cache contributes to a higher multiplier.

A multi should be the highest. Sure some of them are easy offset caches, but some of them are downright evil in the number of additional places to visit. 2, 5, 10 places adds to time and effort so the multiplier is higher.

If there is no multiplier then a 1, 1 traditional gets the same score as a 1, 1 multi even though there may have been additional places to visit in order to achieve the success of the multi, involving additional travel, thinking, huting and finding additional small cannisters along the way.

I'm only a stats whore against myself. I'm trying to find 365 caches in Victoria in my first year and that's my only target so these stats while interesting wouldn't cause me to target different type of caches to try and boost my score.

In all honesty, if you hide it I will come (well most of the time), so while the new stats are interesting it wouldn't contribute to me looking for one cche over another.

Just a thought.

Team Piggy · Post by **Team Piggy** » 31 December 04 12:29 pm

Even Team Geocoopers 580+ ? didnt get a look in !

Papa Bear_Left · Post by **Papa Bear_Left** » 31 December 04 1:27 pm

caughtatwork wrote:I wonder if a multiplier should also be applied for the type of cache.

Seems like a 'double whammy' If I set a cunning mystery cache or a multi-multi waypoint multicache, I'll give it an appropriately high rating. To also give it a multiplier is redundant.

I'm a cache snob and don't consider virtuals or locationless caches to be 'real', so I'd love to see a way of taking them out of the equation.
(there's been hints on the secondary site that this might be happening soon anyway.)

Post by **caughtatwork** » 31 December 04 2:36 pm

Actually, in hindsight, I think any scoring system will come under the gun from stats whores who believe that they are better (ie. have higher scores) than other people but the system of scoring doesn't take into account their difficulties.

Statswhore1: But I did 50 caches in another state and it always difficult doing caches out of your home state, so I should get a higher score.

Statswhore2: But I did 50 caches in another country and it always difficult doing caches out of your home country, so I should get a higher score.

Statswhore3: But I did 50 caches in one day, so if you add in the logisitics and difficulty of doing that I should get a higher score.

Statswhore4: But I did 50 caches with a crappy old Garmin38 and with the way it doesn't lock on to satellites that well I should get a higher score.

Statswhore5: But I did 50 caches in the country and finding haystack caches are ever so hard so I should get a higher score.

Statswhore6: But I did 50 caches and they're mostly micros which are every so much harder than 1 liter boxes so I should get a higher score.

And so on and so on.

Stats. Decided I don't like them unless they have something of interest other than a method of comparison.

Just an additional 2c worth.

Mind Socket · Post by **Mind Socket** » 31 December 04 2:46 pm

Agreed. I just ran about 20 different stats on some old data and came up with all sorts of different ways to look at the data. I found out who did lots of caches, who did lots of high terrain caches, who did both high diff and terrain on average ...... It was interesting to see that one team with heaps of finds tended to stick to the easier caches, while another tries most things.

I think that 20 could be cut to down 3 or 4 different stats and then boiled down further into a graph so that people don't get obsessed with the numbers.

I've asked i! for more data ... if that comes through, I may put some one off graphs up for for curiosity/discussion purposes.

Happy NY,
- R

TEAM LANDCRUISER · Post by **TEAM LANDCRUISER** » 31 December 04 3:58 pm

Team Piggy wrote:Even Team Geocoopers 580+ ? didnt get a look in !

<font color="blue"><font face="verdana"><b>I noticed similar anomolies in the WA totals as we were the only WA based team on that list yet we certainly don't have the most finds west of the nulla' <p>From what I could deduce I think it relates to earlier finds before the stats were introduced on Geo Aus. If you've never done the import logs from your profile page ... I'm assuming it's only counting your most recent finds in the stats totals.