Extremes

This page is a Work in progress and needs severe fixes.

Feel free to contribute by editing the page. When it has the information needed in a readable form and in a decent formatted way, remove the FIXME template-tag.

Reason: WIP! New screenshots. Split into four pages. This page should describe what Extremes are. Then one page per Profile stats module, and one for the tool.

General information

This is an expression used by Profile stats module Extremes by area

In simple terms "extremes" refers to attributes like most western, highest, most favorite points and so forth.

Some of the below are affected by the setting for Antipode caches.

Calculation

Which geocache is an extreme is determined by finding the current most extreme in its field. For example the most western one. Current meaning a none archived, but potentially disabled. Then that geocache, all geocaches that are on that coordinate, or further west, including archived, are counted as "most western". This means that there may be multiple geocaches counting as "the most western", both archived and none archived.

Various event types are excluded since the events aren't meant to be "permanent".

Tool

A tool to provide the extremes in a given county, region or country is availble here. It is possible to select multiple counties within the same region or country, in which case the extremes for all selected counties are given.

Categories

Most finds

The geocache with the most number of Found it logs.

Most favorited

The geocache with the most Favorite points.

Highest Wilson score

The geocache with the highest Wilson score.

Oldest

This is based on the hidden date fields, as opposed to the publish date field. There is also a hard-coded minimum month to minimize the risk of fabricated data.

Most central

The most central geocache in the area, based on geographical data (not demographical data). The central point of an area can be counted in several ways. With this fact in mind it is very likely that Project-GC's central point may not match what's commonly known. Project-GC has implemented what they believe is the most correct way to calculate it.

Project-GC uses its polygon data and then calculates a centroid using the GIS function ST_Centroid.

Various reasons why Project-GC's center might not match other definitions:

• Project-GC calculates a Centroid. Other methods might use the center of a bounding box for example.
• Project-GC uses the polygon data it has for the area. This data might not match the data used by others.
• Project-GC uses country definitions as Geocaching.com has them. In some cases it means that islands belonging to a country does not.
• Many commonly known centers are based on very old calculations, which are less precise than we can do with today's computers.
• Some commonly known centers has been calculated by compacting the areas by removing all sea water and "moving islands" onto mainland.
• Different handling of the fact that the Earth is a sphere, and not flat, and not perfectly round.
• Some have also used methods to divide the country into equal parts of lands (measured in area).
• Some methods include sea water, which Project-GC avoids.

External sources to better understand the issues:

• Geographical centre.
• Sveriges geografiska mittpunkt (Swedish)

Most northern

The geocache with the highest latitude number. Plotted coordinates is what counts, not any final solution. As always the country assigned to the geocache is also what counts, not where it's actually geographically located.

Most eastern

See most northern.

Most southern

See most northern.

Most western

See most northern.

Highest

The geocache with the highest elevation according to Project-GC's elevation data.

It's intentional that there isn't a "Lowest" category. The data isn't reliable enough.

Weighted percent

The overall percentage of extremes found in a country, with region extremes weighted by how many regions there are in the country and county extremes weighted by how many counties there are in the country.

Three different percentages are calculated independently:

• Percentage of country extremes found (country extremes found / categories)

• Percentage of region extremes found (region extremes found / regions in the country / categories)

• Percentage of county extremes found (county extremes found / counties in the country / categories)

Then the average is taken of these percentages to get the Weighted percent.

If project-gc doesn't have counties for the country, then the weight of the county extremes is 0 and the Weighted percent is the average of country percent and region percent.

If project-gc doesn't have regions for the country either, then the weight for the region extremes is 0, and the Weighted percent is the same as country percent.

The bars shown are divided into sections for country percent, region percent and county percent, and by hovering your mouse over the Weighted percent, you can see these individual percentages.

Example

FAQ

Several of the below should probably be moved into a proper page. Like Map extremes, Extremes by category, Extremes by area.

I'm working on updating my bookmark list of important US caches, and now that PGC lists extremes, I'm adding the "official" highest cache to each state. Do you have an easy way to generate the highest cache for each US State?

The Map extremes tool supports multi-select of regions (states). Click the multi-select button to the right of County to enable it. Do your search, select the correct tab below the map, select all, and add to Virtual GPS.

I'm noticing some states are missing. At first I thought it was because I own two/three, but Maryland (which I own) is listed, but Ohio (which I've found but don't own) is missing.

Make sure that you have added a filter to show your own finds. It's likely that you have already found these Extremes that you believe are missing.

How does the colors in Extremes by category work?

It's a color-heatmap going from green to red. Green has the fewest finds, red has the most finds. It's calculated based on the values on that row (area level).

How does the Weighted percent work?

The visual representation is divided into three sections. The sections show the percentage of country extremes found, percentage of region extremes, and percentage of county extremes. The percentage shown is the average of those three. You can hover the percentage with your mouse to get more detailed numbers.

What does Unique mean in the footer?

A geocache can typically be both the one with the most favorite points and the one with most finds. That would grant you two Extremes, but only one unique Extreme.

I have found the Extreme with the highest amount of favorite points in San Diego, but I didn't get any Extreme for California.

The extremes are determined per administrative level. There is probably another geocache in the region (state) that has more favorite points than the one you found. It may be the one with most favorite points in San Diego, that doesn't mean it is the one with the most in California.

I have logged GCxxxx as the oldest geocache of Noord-Brabant in The Netherlands, but it's now archived. What will happen?

It will still count as an Oldest Extreme for you. How it works is that there is a daily process that finds the oldest non-archived geocache for each area. Then all geocaches, in that area, that are at least that old counts as the Oldest extreme, regardless of if they are archived or not. The same concept applies for all Extremal categories.

Why isn't there an extreme for Favorite percent?

First off we think it's enough with two Extremes based on favorite points. But the data would be to volatile. A new geocache with a single log and one favorite point would end up at 100% FP%. The day after it might be down to 12%. We also find the Wilson score to be a better measurement for "best geocache".

Can I lose my Extreme?

Yes, for example in the case of Most western, if a new geocache which has a more extreme value is published it will beat the one you logged, and you'll lose it. Similar with Most logs or Most favorite points, if another geocache passes the one you logged it's off the list of Extremes.