This query is linked to a question raised in another forum - however this specific query needs more explanation and clarification
On the Map tab on profile you see the countries you have been to and the number of caches found along with a %age figure and then further down there are the regions/counties
within the countries again with caches found and a %age figure
I am aware that the %age is calculated as follows
"The percentage itself is calculated as number of finds, divided by the number of none archived geocaches, rounded down to closest even percentage. [ floor((numFinds/numActive)*100) ]" (copied from PGC wiki)
Initially I thought this meant the remaining %age was that of how many caches remained in that region / country. That is not the case - that is because the 'number of finds' includes archived caches and the 'number of none archived geocaches' obviously doesn't. However just looking at this chart it does make that %age figure misleading as it suggests you have found that amount of caches relative to what is out there but in fact it is way off the mark
Take my home region for example
South East England: 17338 (96%) - I read that and think 17k found and only 693 caches in that region to go (the remaining 4%)
My research on this shows that I have found 17338 and there are currently 17865 active caches in that region - this would give the 96% - but that is skewed since I (and many others) would read this as I only have 4% of those left to find - but I know I have around 10.9k caches unfound by me in that region - thats it nearer 63%
I am aware that there are limitations in producing the figures that would seem logical and the anomaly comes due to the two different figures not using the same data, one uses archived caches the other doesn't - so how is that %age figure of any use
In addition to the above when this matter was being discussed some produced their stats and it showed that their numbers came up with very high %age figures - over 100% ??
Take my home county stat :-
Kent: 10943 (151%) - I am not able to disseminate the number of caches in this county as GC only go as far as regions - doing a bit of maths suggest I may still have around 7.2k caches in the county unfound - but that is not what many people see when they look at that 151% (I would have to use some other source to get the correct figures and i may be completely off here)
However - am I correct in this assumption ? - because the maths I used for the Kent numbers don't work with the South East Region numbers
what do these %ages over 100 reflect ?
Is it possible to work out how many unfound caches there are using these figures ?
Thanks
Tim
