Reference The Graphs Thread **IMAGE HEAVY** - Back in Business Again!

In the interest of not cluttering up the Activity Tracking thread with many, many 500kb images, I_H has so very kindly allowed me to make a new one with an image-heavy warning.

So... graphs! Anyone have any games (or combinations of games) they want me to graph? Or, alternatively, does anyone wants the script to produce these statistics themselves? It's not thaaaat hard to set up; the script will download thread(s), chew them up and spit out spreadsheets, which you can then plug into your favourite spreadsheet program to produce pretty graphs. I'm using Gnumeric for that, but any one will do.

To start us off...


Timeline graph of the award-winning RPGs since Autumn 2007:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/awardwinners2.png]

It gets really squished up near the end (and the legend is messed up; I'll see if I can fix that sometime). Looks like in its day GAW3 was pulling about as many posts as all the rest put together now. (As these lines are the smoothed lines, some of the 'outlier' points are cut off - like GAW really maxes out at like 90 posts, but you can't see that in the graph.)


Hourly graph (board time):
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/awardwinners_hours.png]

No surprises here. All you US folks sleep at normal hours, apparently. *shakes fist*

Although, hm, this graph is heavily biased towards GAW due to its sheer size. In that case, average and median scores:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/awardwinners_days2.png]
...so it's still the case, but it's a less dramatic difference.


Weekly graph:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/awardwinners_days.png]

So on average the weekends are the slowest, but the median says the slump is on Friday. Interesting.


Tide of Flames and As Father And Son: (because I can )
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/tof_afas.png]

An early graph from before I figured out how to label the axes. This time, both are calculated as the number of days since the game's opening, which is why the AFAS line ends abruptly at around day 200 - it's not been around as long. (The thin, jaggedy lines in the background are the raw numbers.)

 

I_H Top Edit: Moved from the RPF Activity Thread

---

Yay Xan's Tool!

Here is a fun graph of the two Podracer's compared two each other over time...

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v734/Imperial_Hammer/PodracerThroughTime.jpg]

Its way cool! I can see exactly where all the races were.

Doing regressions off the data is nice too. Can see at what rate I was losing posts, and gauge how strong it was at the start comparatively.

I am very stoked about Xan's tool. I think it can show us alot about how games are run!

Expect heavy use of this by me!

And three cheers for Xan for making something amazing! :D

-I_H

[hr]

Two very different RPGs graphed in Microsoft Excel:

[b][u]GAW 3[/u][/b]

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v734/Imperial_Hammer/GAW3Graph.jpg]

[b][u]The Senate Game[/u][/b]

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v734/Imperial_Hammer/TheSenateGameGraph.jpg]

 

Yah yah, x2 post, big whoop, you wanna fight about it?

[image=http://content.ytmnd.com/content/9/d/e/9de0b5fdf849d8dee30320a48a25629f.gif]

Re: Xan's Hourly Graph

So if its Pacific Time, the peak is around noon Pacific, 3pm Eastern...

So after school for the Easterons?

And then there is a night bump... I know those who post then. Mostly night-owl Eastern Timers and evening Pacificers

Re: The Weekly Graph

Its good to finally see the trends on paper!

The RPF, like real jobs, rests on the weekend.

-I_H

 

Which is odd, and suggests that the RPF is a procrastination tool for many rather than an actual leisure activity.

 

Procrastination is important. It's helping God to make sure you're in place when the meteor strikes.

 

On a tangentially related note, the original download script I wrote (which the spreadsheet-generating script is based off) saved threads in their original formatting sans banners. This has some very nice potential for archiving - I know the auto-pruner is turned off currently in the RPFs, but if you've ever wanted to have your favourite threads saved, that's a relatively painless way to do it. So if anyone is interested, accost me over PM/IM..


I vaguely remember (from looking at the boards stats page when I had VIPship) that the JC as a whole is more active on weekdays. People must have lives or something...


What other graphs would you guys like to see? I was thinking of doing, say, average post lengths in a thread(s). Or a breakdown of posts by author name, so you can see who the most active posters are in a thread(s), what days they're most active and so on - or is that too stalkery?

 

Maybe it's my inner stalker talking, but I would be interested in seeing activity by poster in a given thread.

I can't think of a good reason why, though. The others also sound interesting, if that is deemed to stalkerish.

 

I guess my point is that work and school are parts of those lives. Very time consuming parts.

 

Alrighty then ... Posts Per Author!

Three games, three types of player group styles. I'm not graphing them together this time, because there's very little correlation between them.


Tide of Flames:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/ti_auth.png]
Eight players at a time, with spots filled by new players as they drop out. (Also, you can see who the regulars-from-the-start are... )

Lea Monde:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/le_auth.png]
Four players, total, no replacements. Which kind of sucked when two players dropped out about a month into the game.

As Father And Son:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/af_auth.png]
Unlimited number of players, with more of a revolving door when it comes to who's actually in, but at least there are players rotating in as well as out.


... I might have to remove users who only posted once or twice from the charts, they're messing up the statistics. Ah, well.

 

-Nick was just Nick's sock, so...

Anyway, this AIM conversation:

Xan: Hey check out the graphs thread... now with posts per author!
Matt: i was going to suggest a comparison of finished game' post counts by GM...
Matt: like...a Sinrebirth graph
Xan: for that, i'd have to find a finished game, and other than I_H's I can't think of any
Xan: or Sinre, true
Xan: hrm
Matt: haha
Matt: i dunno
Matt: comparitive success of a gm's games
Matt: presumably they'd get more successful
Xan: Oo... Yes that would be interesting
Matt: a nice future one might be trying to find a correlation between winners of best new game and end post count
Matt: or rather
Matt: if there's any correlation
Matt: between winning that award
Matt: and the final success of the game
Xan: yes
Xan: Iiiinteresting indeed, that would be!
Matt: and, in the future, the new award - most potential at opening - with the final success

 

Yeah, but the automated script doesn't know that; just like it doesn't know that Yuuls_Sock is Yuul, or ... the other socks, I won't blow their cover.


On the list, those things are.


EDIT: By request, author breakdown for Fool's Gamble:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/foo_auth.png]
(Script now removes people who've only posted once; looking at this, I may change it further to remove users with under 5 posts or something.)

I don't know enough about the game to comment, other than again, it's pretty easy to see who the regulars-from-the-start are.

 

Feed me links to all the games you've opened (or, more accurately, the games you want considered) and I'll graph 'em together.


Re: Turning Point - I just followed the links from the Community Centre. *shrug*

 

... It might actually have been 128 ABY: The Force War that's graphed in the winners graph, apparently. I have no idea if/why/how that happened though; too many graphs.

ANYWAY. Sinrebirth graphs!

Timeline:

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/sinre.png]

Your MVPs: (super wide graph, lemme tell ya)

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/sinre_auth.png]

 

Go Xan!

Way to make a good tool even better!

I really enjoyed that Sinre composite graph of the posters that work under him. It really shows the relationships between users. Who are the groupies, who are not, etc, etc. I can guarentee you the names under my games would be totally different!

Sinre you dog, cultivating your cadre

How very interesting.

-I_H

 

How about something fun?

And The Most Social User Is (Hoopers 6.0 graph):
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/social.png]

Sarge221!

Evidently, that RPF Star award was well deserved.

 

Thanks Xan for proving how awesome I am *waves a little flag with his name on it*

These graphs are great Nice job!

 

*grin* You're welcome, and thanks.


Something on an even larger scale, for nostalgia's sake: The Integrated Balance of Power

Timeline of IBOP threads:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/ibop.png]

IBOP's Players:
[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/ibop_auth.png]

Two and a half years (probably over three, if you consider the original Balance of Power, which isn't graphed here), thousands of posts and over a hundred participants (and that's with the minimum-user-post threshold set to 10). Now there's a legend.

 

Thanks to the Hooper's graph, I finally made it onto a graph!

YES!

 

My MVPs (using post counts from all 10 of my games)

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v734/Imperial_Hammer/I_HUseractivitygraph-2.jpg]

I couldn't make Excel do that fancy stacked thing that Xan made hers do.

Still cool though! Many blessings and thanks to those with high numbers!

-I_H

 

I_H - Strange... Excel definitely should have that feature. I couldn't tell you where to find it, though... look in the help files maybe?

Well then, how about ...

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/darthramza.png]

 

Ktala is an RP Postoholic. Ive noticed she has the most posts in almost every game she plays in.

 

Heh, I don't have all the games Ktala's ever played in saved (I think that would take a while) but based on the ones I do have ...

[image=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v605/xany/ktala-1.png]

... yeah, probably. Gooo Ktala!