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Statistics of ALL Cachers


BaylorGrad

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I noticed that in another thread, another user mentioned that the median number of finds for all of the Geocaching accounts was 34 finds. I'm wondering where this information comes from, and whether there's any other *over all* statistics out there.

 

You know--mean, median, and mode.

How far away from home does the average cacher travel to get a cache?

How many DNFs does the average cacher have?

How many of each cache type does the average cacher have?

How many caches does the average user find before attending an event?

What is the average age of a cacher?

 

Stats like these I find pretty interesting, so I'm just wondering if others have discovered or heard of broad, overarching statistics like these.

 

Thanks! :)

 

BaylorGrad

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There's a site that lists statistics for all cachers.

 

The problem is that it takes it's numbers from certain caches it has deemed as heavily hit caches. So the site says I have 600 caches when I have twice that. So it's not really accurate. The site explains how it's done.

It's the closest we've got though.

 

Ah, there it is.

 

Cacherstats.com

http://www.cacherstats.com/

 

Actually, on reviewing your question, I don't think this is what you were looking for. This site only lists stats for cachers with over 200 finds.

I don't know where you can find all cachers stats.

I'm sure someone will shortly.

Edited by Sol seaker
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The idea that geocachers' statistics are comparable to each other is a fallacy.

 

You've been caching longer than me.

You've attended more events than me.

I've found more caches than you.

I've hidden more caches than you.

 

How is anything that I've said false?

 

Okay, What do you get from that? You looking for community or something else?

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The idea that geocachers' statistics are comparable to each other is a fallacy.

 

You've been caching longer than me.

You've attended more events than me.

I've found more caches than you.

I've hidden more caches than you.

 

How is anything that I've said false?

 

How is any of this relevant?

 

What is the meaning of the comparison?

 

Is there some sort of value attached to this comparison?

 

Are you drawing any sort of conclusion?

 

The plain numbers are meaningless without interpretation, but they can't be interpreted in a meaningful way without establishing some sort of baseline control - which is just not possible at the level of "all cachers."

 

Far too many geocachers make the incorrect assumption that they are in competition with all other geocachers, when in fact, there are countless personal interpretations of the game that are all valid and in keeping with the guidelines. You have logged more finds than me, but unless we have agreed upon criteria for competing with each other, comparing our find counts is completely meaningless.

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Mods, please close this topic.

 

---

 

You are all unbelievable.

 

Thanks to Sol Seaker for actually attempting to answer my question.

 

To everyone else--I can't believe the direction you all took this thread. Seriously. I'm not comparing myself to others--I don't give a care in the world about that. I just have a general interest in the statistics of the game. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? Am I hurting any of you by asking these questions? Can I not be curious for the sake of curiosity?

 

I might love this game, but these boards are another story. 50% useful information and 50% ridicule, frustration, anger, hate, assumptions, misconceptions, and attacks. (Which ironically, I have just contributed to.)

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You are all unbelievable.

Yeah, these things tend to happen a lot in the geocaching forums.

 

Other than ranking by # of caches found, the only way to get the statistics you mentioned is to do a query on Groundspeak's database. They do occasionally provide some snippets but not much and not often. The last figure I remember is # of people who logged a geocache on 10/10/2010.

 

Oh, Groundspeak doesn't capture age, and not everyone entered their home coordinates - which changes over time making any numbers based on that questionable.

 

There used to be polls in the forums, but it has been disabled.

Edited by Chrysalides
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Mods, please close this topic.

 

---

 

You are all unbelievable.

 

Thanks to Sol Seaker for actually attempting to answer my question.

 

To everyone else--I can't believe the direction you all took this thread. Seriously. I'm not comparing myself to others--I don't give a care in the world about that. I just have a general interest in the statistics of the game. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? Am I hurting any of you by asking these questions? Can I not be curious for the sake of curiosity?

 

I might love this game, but these boards are another story. 50% useful information and 50% ridicule, frustration, anger, hate, assumptions, misconceptions, and attacks. (Which ironically, I have just contributed to.)

 

50% useful information is actually probably pretty good for any internet forum.

(This post may or may not be in that 50%).

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Hey, that was me!! I'm the guy who said the median was 34 finds. It was blogged or Tweeted by CEO Jeremy Irish himself within the last two months. I'd better go find a link. But it's 1:30 AM my time, and the OP has asked for a close. I will hopefully find it tomorrow, if the thread is still open. :lol:

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Hey, that was me!! I'm the guy who said the median was 34 finds. It was blogged or Tweeted by CEO Jeremy Irish himself within the last two months. I'd better go find a link. But it's 1:30 AM my time, and the OP has asked for a close. I will hopefully find it tomorrow, if the thread is still open. :lol:

I don't doubt that Jeremy blogged a number like that. I suspect the reason though was to support what narcissa said. The vast majority of geocachers are not "numbers" cachers. They are not caching in order to find the most caches or even to find more caches than their friends. They are not in this for competition. They don't compare stats. They go caching when they are able to and have fun finding caches. Those who are "competing" for the most finds or any other statistic, are a tiny fraction of all cachers.

 

While the stats that BaylorGrad asked about could be misused by people who want to claim there are in the top half of all geocachers or in the top 10% or whatever, they are useful as stand alone statistics to get an idea of what geocaching is all about. This is definitely useful information for Groundspeak for business planning and thus they may not want to share all of what they know. But it is also useful to remind us that most geocachers are casual participants, others may be very active, and only a a few are real fanatic.

Edited by tozainamboku
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Hey, that was me!! I'm the guy who said the median was 34 finds. It was blogged or Tweeted by CEO Jeremy Irish himself within the last two months. I'd better go find a link. But it's 1:30 AM my time, and the OP has asked for a close. I will hopefully find it tomorrow, if the thread is still open. :lol:

I don't doubt that Jeremy blogged a number like that. I suspect the reason though was to support what narcissa said. The vast majority of geocachers are not "numbers" cachers. They are not caching in order to find the most caches or even to find more caches than their friends. They are not in this for competition. They don't compare stats. They go caching when they are able to and have fun finding caches. Those who are "competing" for the most finds or any other statistic, are a tiny fraction of all cachers.

 

While the stats that BaylorGrad asked about could be misused by people who want to claim there are in the top half of all geocachers or in the top 10% or whatever, they are useful as stand alone statistics to get an idea of what geocaching is all about. This is definitely useful information for Groundspeak for business planning and thus they may not want to share all of what they know. But it is also useful to remind us that most geocachers are casual participants, others may be very active, and only a a few are real fanatic.

 

I saw that tweet by Jeremy too--I think he might have been citing it to explain why they set the favorites ratio at 1:10, i.e., there are a lot of casual cachers that don't have a large number of finds, and they wouldn't have many, if any, favorite points to award if the ratio was set much higher.

 

I can see how some overall statistics would be interesting to some people. Yes, it's hard to generalize over such a wide range of people, but seeing the breakdown of certain things would be interesting. More interesting would be a graph than simply a percentage. What's the range for how quickly people reach 100 finds? That sort of thing. Yeah, I think that could be interesting.

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Hi BaylorGrad - you may no longer be reading this thread, but here goes.

 

Groundspeak is the only entity with the ability to scrape the site for the kinds of overarching statistics that interest you.

I can recall a 2 instances where Jeremy (one of the 3 site owners) has referenced user stats.

The recent twitter that several have already mentioned (I think I remember that the group he referenced were cachers who had logged in over the previous 3 months?)(I could be wrong...), and a thread here May 06.

 

How far away from home does the average cacher travel to get a cache?

that cacher would need to have entered home coords for this. I suspect many do not. To own caches, some home coords must now be entered (the cache report form won't load without them), but this is rather new. And none are required to hunt caches.

There are far more user accounts then cache owners.

 

How many DNFs does the average cacher have?

I'd guess that average number is close to, or less then ONE. Just a guess, but the average of 34 finds suggests a huge number of cachers with very few finds, hence very few logged DNFs. This is just me, speculating

 

How many of each cache type does the average cacher have?

again, because 34 is such a low number, I think you'd see, as averages, in the US - overwhelmingly Traditional, and not much else. This would be different in Europe, where the offset (tour guide) type multicache is more common.

How many caches does the average user find before attending an event?

 

see above, the "average user" probably never attends an event. If you scrape for "users that have ever attended an event" then you'd have a number.... what number? no clue here. :rolleyes:

 

What is the average age of a cacher?

 

There's no way at all for the website, or anyone else to know that. I think that MIGO (Michigan Geo Assoication) once asked that question of its membership, and I recall thinking that the Michigan caching community was substantially younger then the Florida caching community, as self reported.

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Based on a recent survey, the average geocacher age is 38 and a large percentage have children between 6-12 years old.

 

34 is the median number of finds, based on a recent database query. I also used "active geocacher" statistics, so only those who logged a cache in the 3 months were counted (I think. It was some "reasonable" timeframe to get a helpful result). It is hard to define an "active cacher" so we have to make some reasonable definition. It will be interesting to do the same query at the end of August to see if that number changed, since this will be the end of the Summer peak.

 

The other stats requested are interesting, but we haven't done any queries like these. If I do a query I'll be happy to share the information. There isn't anything proprietary in the answers.

 

Jeremy

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Based on a recent survey, the average geocacher age is 38 and a large percentage have children between 6-12 years old.

 

34 is the median number of finds, based on a recent database query. I also used "active geocacher" statistics, so only those who logged a cache in the 3 months were counted (I think. It was some "reasonable" timeframe to get a helpful result). It is hard to define an "active cacher" so we have to make some reasonable definition. It will be interesting to do the same query at the end of August to see if that number changed, since this will be the end of the Summer peak.

 

The other stats requested are interesting, but we haven't done any queries like these. If I do a query I'll be happy to share the information. There isn't anything proprietary in the answers.

 

Jeremy

 

Interesting.... Thanks.

 

Nice to see you in the forums again!!

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Based on a recent survey, the average geocacher age is 38 and a large percentage have children between 6-12 years old.

 

34 is the median number of finds, based on a recent database query. I also used "active geocacher" statistics, so only those who logged a cache in the 3 months were counted (I think. It was some "reasonable" timeframe to get a helpful result). It is hard to define an "active cacher" so we have to make some reasonable definition. It will be interesting to do the same query at the end of August to see if that number changed, since this will be the end of the Summer peak.

 

The other stats requested are interesting, but we haven't done any queries like these. If I do a query I'll be happy to share the information. There isn't anything proprietary in the answers.

 

Jeremy

 

So there you have it.. the vast majority of everyone on the forums has more finds than the average cacher. Give yourself a C+ or better and go caching.

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Interesting findings, Jeremy. That was exactly what I was looking for. No harm done to anyone. :)

 

Except I do think it's amusing that according to that data, i'm 16 years younger than the average cacher. This is exactly what I expected. :) I'd love to see how the data changes come August, like you mentioned!

 

BaylorGrad

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Based on a recent survey, the average geocacher age is 38 and a large percentage have children between 6-12 years old.

 

34 is the median number of finds, based on a recent database query. I also used "active geocacher" statistics, so only those who logged a cache in the 3 months were counted (I think. It was some "reasonable" timeframe to get a helpful result). It is hard to define an "active cacher" so we have to make some reasonable definition. It will be interesting to do the same query at the end of August to see if that number changed, since this will be the end of the Summer peak.

 

The other stats requested are interesting, but we haven't done any queries like these. If I do a query I'll be happy to share the information. There isn't anything proprietary in the answers.

 

Jeremy

 

Wow!! That sure does not fit my experience in my little part of the world! Of course, my experience is based mostly on those that attend Geocaching events, so that in itself is going to skew my perception. But I have seen a very small percentage that has children, and fewer that cache regularly with them. I would guess that the low end of the age spectrum that I see would be around 34, with very few exceptions younger than that.

 

I would love to see those stats extended to include only those that have caches for a given period of time... perhaps a year... to eliminate those that found it too time consuming to do with children, or dropped out quickly for other reasons. I suspect that you would see a pretty large change in the demographics.

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The idea that geocachers' statistics are comparable to each other is a fallacy.

 

Just because someone mentions or asks about caching statistics does not mean they are somehow going make some adverse comparison about someone else.

Some of us are just stat hounds.

The fantasy football season is long over, there are another 4 weeks before baseball starts.

We need things to count.

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Except I do think it's amusing that according to that data, i'm 16 years younger than the average cacher.

No, you're 16 years younger than the average cacher who responded to the survey :) Therein lies the fundamental problem with such statistics. But I agree, they're interesting.

 

Yes--you're right. I've taken enough statistics and research methods courses to elaborate on that point for a few hours, but I'd rather not. (Makes Geocaching less fun, and that's definitely not my goal, haha!)

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I wish the average cacher in my area was 38. Seems like the average South Florida cacher is 50-60 and usually a retiree (when I went to some local kayaking meetups I found the average age even older). Most of them are nice folks, but even though I'm 29 I am could age-wise reasonably be the child of most geocachers I've met!

 

I too would be interested to hear statistics just because I find statistics to be interesting.

 

How many finds were logged in 2010 worldwide, broken out by month?

 

What percentage of cachers has attended at least 1 event?

 

Of all active caches in the world, what percentage fall into each size category? What about each cache type?

 

Percentage of active caches with no attributes selected?

 

Percentage of active caches that are PMO?

 

Percentage of cachers with at least N finds (50?) who have never logged a DNF?

 

How many "active" (logged a Find in the last 3 months) caching accounts vs inactive caching accounts (no Finds logged in that time)?

 

# of active caches vs # of archived caches?

Edited by joshism
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I wish the average cacher in my area was 38. Seems like the average South Florida cacher is 50-60 and usually a retiree (when I went to some local kayaking meetups I found the average age even older). Most of them are nice folks, but even though I'm 29 I am could age-wise reasonably be the child of most geocachers I've met!

 

Heh. Now you know how I felt when I went to my first Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting.

 

I'm 35 (36 soon), so not far off the survey average. I was 31 when we started, and, plus or minus five years, that was about the age of most of the active cachers I met at events in Germany. We seem to have a wider spectrum here in Montgomery, with representatives at nearly all ages.

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Suddenly I feel ever-so-slightly above average! :lol: We fit into that demographic pretty well, as do the 4 or 5 other caching families that I know in real life. We don't attend events, and we cache occasionally and sporadically. I find the repeated use of "logged a cache in the last 3 months" in this thread to define an active cacher kind of funny, as we can easily go 3 months without logging a cache. It doesn't mean that we aren't still active cachers, it just means that weather or other stuff has gotten in the way. When we do cache, we carefully select where we are going, and what caches we are going to try to find. It's rare for us to find more than 3 or 4 caches in one outing. I suspect that there are a lot of families like us, that don't attend events or participate in the forums, and so are largely invisible to the really active cachers. Maybe that's why I think some of these broad stats are/could be interesting--they show a different view of cachers that you otherwise might not see.

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After reading this thread, I agree that a overall cacher stat search would be great. Such as: How many cachers in each state, how many cachers active in last "unit of time" (Year, Month, Day, etc),

 

I can think of a bunch of other desired stats and you, the cacher community, can easily think of more.

 

This day of computers should make this possible - a programing problem, yes, but possible.

 

rwsherlock

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After reading this thread, I agree that a overall cacher stat search would be great. Such as: How many cachers in each state...

How do you define a cacher's "state"? What about the people that are migratory? I cache in Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois (and frequently Tennessee and Kentucky), but my home is in Illinois. That's a very hard line to define.

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After reading this thread, I agree that a overall cacher stat search would be great. Such as: How many cachers in each state, how many cachers active in last "unit of time" (Year, Month, Day, etc),

 

I can think of a bunch of other desired stats and you, the cacher community, can easily think of more.

 

This day of computers should make this possible - a programing problem, yes, but possible.

 

rwsherlock

 

Why the heck do you give a rats rump what numbers are attached to others accounts?

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After reading this thread, I agree that a overall cacher stat search would be great. Such as: How many cachers in each state...

How do you define a cacher's "state"? What about the people that are migratory? I cache in Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois (and frequently Tennessee and Kentucky), but my home is in Illinois. That's a very hard line to define.

Some of us live within 90 minutes of 4 states. I regularly cache them all. I have placed caches in all of them.

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Ok Ok folks. I think what rwsherlock meant was how many cachers call each state HOME, according to the home coordinates that they set with geocaching.com. Although it really wouldn't tell us all that much, it would be interesting--to me at least, and clearly to at least one other.

 

I agree with everything else rwsherlock said. I think those things would be fascinating. Not interesting to everyone, but interesting to me.

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Ok Ok folks. I think what rwsherlock meant was how many cachers call each state HOME, according to the home coordinates that they set with geocaching.com. Although it really wouldn't tell us all that much, it would be interesting--to me at least, and clearly to at least one other.

 

I agree with everything else rwsherlock said. I think those things would be fascinating. Not interesting to everyone, but interesting to me.

 

I am amused that my request "ruffled" some feathers. BaylorGrad got it right!!!! Stats to me are interesting. And yes, I know cachers that are registered in more then one state. I also find it interesting to see stats for those states of my good Buddies.

 

Thanks again for any Positive input to my fascination.

 

KOC

rwsherlock

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Why the heck do you give a rats rump what numbers are attached to others accounts?

 

Well, why the heck do you give a rat's rump about what other people give a rat's rump about? :huh:

 

Or is there a chance that, if we crunch your numbers, we'll know where you hid the-- ACK

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I wish the average cacher in my area was 38. Seems like the average South Florida cacher is 50-60 and usually a retiree (when I went to some local kayaking meetups I found the average age even older). Most of them are nice folks, but even though I'm 29 I am could age-wise reasonably be the child of most geocachers I've met!

 

Heh. Now you know how I felt when I went to my first Veterans of Foreign Wars meeting.

 

I'm 35 (36 soon), so not far off the survey average. I was 31 when we started, and, plus or minus five years, that was about the age of most of the active cachers I met at events in Germany. We seem to have a wider spectrum here in Montgomery, with representatives at nearly all ages.

 

You're only 35, I would have guess a different age. ;)

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Yah, I agree about the Florida age. I'm 70 and find geocaching a real gas. Keeps my mind about 25 even if my body sometimes exclaims "Who Me?" when I am out in the brush looking at a cache 25 feet up a tree.

 

KOC

rwsherlock

 

Last year while searching an area with 5 or 6 caches, we met up with an 'older than us' couple who were also caching. They gave us a hint for the one they had found and we gave them a hint for the one we had just found as we passed in different directions. We never could find the one they had just come from, even WITH their hint! We were very humbled as our group had 3 adults AND 2 kids and they were just the 2 of them and not as 'limber' as us. That day I became convinced that while geocaching may be a sport of the body, it is also VERY much a sport of the mind as well...and obviously our minds had handicapped us much more than their less 'limber' bodies had handicapped them. :blink:

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Yah, I agree about the Florida age. I'm 70 and find geocaching a real gas. Keeps my mind about 25 even if my body sometimes exclaims "Who Me?" when I am out in the brush looking at a cache 25 feet up a tree.

 

KOC

rwsherlock

 

Last year while searching an area with 5 or 6 caches, we met up with an 'older than us' couple who were also caching. They gave us a hint for the one they had found and we gave them a hint for the one we had just found as we passed in different directions. We never could find the one they had just come from, even WITH their hint! We were very humbled as our group had 3 adults AND 2 kids and they were just the 2 of them and not as 'limber' as us. That day I became convinced that while geocaching may be a sport of the body, it is also VERY much a sport of the mind as well...and obviously our minds had handicapped us much more than their less 'limber' bodies had handicapped them. :blink:

 

Chuckle, Chuckle. I like the reply above. Geocaching is a wonderful Game/Sport/etc/, that all can contribute. While age and or physical conditions may prevent some finds, or #5 terrain may also prevent finding if you don't have a boat, etc., it really is a sport for all.

 

KOC

rwsherlock

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I noticed that in another thread, another user mentioned that the median number of finds for all of the Geocaching accounts was 34 finds. I'm wondering where this information comes from, and whether there's any other *over all* statistics out there.

 

You know--mean, median, and mode.

How far away from home does the average cacher travel to get a cache?

How many DNFs does the average cacher have?

How many of each cache type does the average cacher have?

How many caches does the average user find before attending an event?

What is the average age of a cacher?

 

Stats like these I find pretty interesting, so I'm just wondering if others have discovered or heard of broad, overarching statistics like these.

 

Thanks! :)

 

BaylorGrad

 

Interesting thread. I love the new stats tabs. I love them because my stats are very different from most of the stats I sample. I tend to geostalk anyone that gets on my radar to see how they participate and only about one in a hundred or more has stats anything akin to mine and I'm not talking strictly number totals.

 

I'm not unique, but I'm certainly not statistically average. I like the path less traveled and it's evident in my stats. (The way I interpret them.)

 

My advice to you Baylor Dude (or Girl Dude as the case may be) is to grow a thicker skin and learn to appreciate the players that disagree with you. I never learned much from the folks that tend to always agree with me. :) Some of my favorite forum friends seldom see things as I do. Besides snarkyness is ever so much more entertaining when it doesn't affect you.

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There's a site that lists statistics for all cachers.

 

The problem is that it takes it's numbers from certain caches it has deemed as heavily hit caches. So the site says I have 600 caches when I have twice that. So it's not really accurate. The site explains how it's done.

It's the closest we've got though.

 

Ah, there it is.

 

Cacherstats.com

http://www.cacherstats.com/

 

Actually, on reviewing your question, I don't think this is what you were looking for. This site only lists stats for cachers with over 200 finds.

I don't know where you can find all cachers stats.

I'm sure someone will shortly.

 

That website seems to up to date for you now...are you sure you wern't looking at somone else?

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There's a site that lists statistics for all cachers.

 

The problem is that it takes it's numbers from certain caches it has deemed as heavily hit caches. So the site says I have 600 caches when I have twice that. So it's not really accurate. The site explains how it's done.

It's the closest we've got though.

 

Ah, there it is.

 

Cacherstats.com

http://www.cacherstats.com/

 

Actually, on reviewing your question, I don't think this is what you were looking for. This site only lists stats for cachers with over 200 finds.

I don't know where you can find all cachers stats.

I'm sure someone will shortly.

 

That website seems to up to date for you now...are you sure you wern't looking at somone else?

 

I have been using Cacherstats for quite some time but it really does not give the whole picture. (ie: 200 finds) It also does not provide a compiled information page to the various questions I and others have raised in earlier posts to this thread. Good try tho.....

 

KOC

rwsherlock

Edited by rwsherlock
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