Geocaches per capita

S&AT · Joined: 01 Jan 2008 Posts: 370 Location: Cambridge, UK

In show 244, there was a comment from Sandy that China might have the fewest geocaches per capita, with only just over 200 in the whole country. I decided to have some geek fun and see if this was true. Smile

The answer is that China is close to the bottom, but not quite there. First there are 20 countries that have no caches at all. Many of those are tiny, but they do include North Korea with 22 million inhabitants and Cote d'Ivoire with 20 million. Among those countries with any caches at all, the least dense is the Democratic Republic of the Congo with a single cache shared between 68 million people. Another notable example is the only other country in the world with a population of over 1 billion, India, which despite having nearly as many inhabitants as China has only 81 caches.

At the other end of the scale are some small territories with relatively large numbers of caches. Svalbard is the winner with 20 caches for a population of 2000 (it's part of Norway, but happens to be listed separately) followed by the Isle of Man (297 caches for 76,000 people) and Guam. Of big countries, Sweden is the winner followed by Canada, Denmark, Finland and Norway. I guess those Northerners love the great outdoors, eh?

I did the same for U.S. states too. Here there is a much more uniform distribution but the winner (which I wouldn't have guessed) is Wyoming, followed by Utah. At the other end, DC is bottom by a large amount. Of actual states, the lowest, to my surprise, is Hawaii.

Other things I learned: over half the world's geocaches are in the U.S.

Anyway, I've put all the data at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AvnrBwaYwBA4dFc1aDFjQkFWVE50bVA0bE9CQ1RoVmc&hl=en_GB . I'd be very interested if anyone can draw any more conclusions or make pretty charts.

NevadaWolf · Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 121 Location: Carson City, NV

Since I had ArcGIS open, figured why not? White spots are No Data (mainly cause the map I was using had additional countries listed or I couldn't match it up with S&ATs data).

Hurm, ignore the little scale bar - I had no coordinate system attached to this, so the projection is all goofy (I think it says USA is 80 km long...)

And for the US

The scale bar on this one is right, I got it from US Census.

S&AT · Joined: 01 Jan 2008 Posts: 370 Location: Cambridge, UK

Very nice, thanks NevadaWolf!

GrosseFamille · Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2009 10:36 am Post subject:

S&AT, nice stats! Very interesting to read!!

Landbehrt · Posted: Wed Dec 16, 2009 5:53 pm Post subject:

And here are the statistics for the Canadian provinces:

Province / Abbreviation / Population (2008/04/01) / Caches (2009/12/15) / Caches per million

Prince Edward Island / PE / 139,407 / 1,103 / 7,912.08
New Brunswick / NB / 751,527 / 5,573 / 7,415.57
Nova Scotia / NS / 935,962 / 6,897 / 7,368.89
Newfoundland and Labrador / NL / 508,270 / 2,418 / 4,757.31
Yukon / YT / 31,530 / 126 / 3,996.19
British Colombia / BC / 4,428,356 / 13,273 / 2,997.27
Saskatchewan / SK / 1,010,146 / 2,666 / 2,639.22
Alberta / AB / 3,512,368 / 8,523 / 2,426.57
Manitoba / MB / 1,196,291 / 2,860 / 2,390.72
Quebec / QC / 7,744,530 / 16,459 / 2,125.24
Northwest Territories / NT / 42,514 / 78 / 1,834.69
Ontario / ON / 12,891,787 / 16,647 / 1,291.29
Nunavut / NU / 31.152 / 24 / 770.42

Canada / CA / 33,223,840 / 76,647 / 2,306.99

Sources:

Population : http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_et_territoires_du_Canada
Caches : http://www.geocaching.com

ernie · Joined: 16 Oct 2006 Posts: 33 Location: switzerland

hi there.

thanks for the stats.
i did per capita and also per area (caches per square kilometer) stats about two years ago:

http://www.ingwer.ch/geo/stats2en.html

bear in mind the data is outdated by now, and i don't know if i'll have any time to update anytime soon.
_________________
*** a cache a day keeps the doc away. ***

S&AT · Joined: 01 Jan 2008 Posts: 370 Location: Cambridge, UK

Thanks, Landbehrt. So the Atlantic provinces are way out front there. Interesting to see the Yukon doing so well too.

Captain Jack Aubrey · Joined: 03 Jan 2007 Posts: 59 Location: Northern Utah

Nice thematic map NevadaWolf. Do you do GIS for a local government in Carson City?

daisybones · Joined: 21 Feb 2008 Posts: 189 Location: austin, tx

hey nevadawolf did you get extra credit for that map or use it for a final project? Wink

NevadaWolf · Joined: 02 Feb 2007 Posts: 121 Location: Carson City, NV

Sorry guys, haven't checked forums in a *long* time.

Captain Jack Aubrey
Nope, though I am studying GIS at our college right now. So I had ArcGIS open when S&AT posted on Twitter he had the data.

Maybe someone will hire me then I can do it for real!

daisybones
I just did that for fun. Once I found the data in Excel format, I knew how to import it. My semester project was cooler (in my mind) but alas I can't share it. I learned a lot though in muddling through it.