I am currently taking a statistics/researching methods class and part of a recent assignment was to develop trends. I decided to attempt to determine what geocachers liked to find, based solely on the geocaches I have placed. I came up with some interesting trends I wanted to share with you.
Cachers in my area found caches as part of a series nearly five to one.
I figured the most found caches would be found in town, but this did not always prove true. The most found cache I have is part of the cemetery cache series and it has been found 85 times, followed by F.D. Series caches at 71, 71, 67, and 66 times. The cache with 85 finds also had a cache less than 1/4 mile away had the least amount of finds with only two finds (Go Edieo and Mathseeker) posted but ironically not very many DNFs posted.
Not counting TinmanJones and my new power trail, I had 157 caches with a grand find total of 3,941 or an average of 25.1 finds per cache since I have been hiding since October of 2008.
The new power trail has 103 caches and has been out less than a month with several caches not even having been found yet (or logged) and it has 1005 finds or 9.8 finds per cache since the first cache has been published less than one month ago and several being posted in the last several days. I have had dozens of people inquire about the power trail from at least five states and several milestones already have taken place or have been planned around the trail. I know at least two people completed the entire trail today and haven't logged them yet, so these numbers will quickly change.
This gives me a grand total (as of this posting) of 4,946 smileys that have been logged that I have handed out on my caches.
There is you another idea for a cache gingerose! You can only log the cache if you have handed out so many smileys by giving back to the sport. It could be a number like 5,000 or 10,000 or more smileys handed out. I know many people in Arkansas have tons more caches out than me, and have lots more smileys dished out, but I thought you may find this information interesting, or not.