Welcome to the optimistically titled “more depth” section of the Advent Calendar Challenge website. I’ve been hoping to add more content (and/or redesign the whole website) for ages now and I’ve come to the conclusion that a “blog” of sorts is how is to get things moving. I will aim to post every couple of days with an article that either examines statsitics, details an aspect of the history of the competition or explains what on earth is going on. Lets see how long it lasts!
As it’s day 1, I am minded to cast my eye over player numbers over time. I’m told this should be a line graph but it took me ages to get the charts script working as a stacked bar chart and so that it remains!
After a rapid early growth, the graph shows a steady decline is setting in – only once (2012, perhaps an Olympics hangover? Probably not…) have the player numbers topped 50. This year, at the time of writing, 44 players are signed up, comprised of 40 returning players and 4 new players. New players, by the way, are a statistic that varies apparently randomly:
I am not concerned by the wane in player numbers, as yet. Firstly, as it goes it isn’t a significant one. The rules of the competition almost arbitrarily set the minimum number of players as 12, which we are nowhere near (I can’t remember exactly, but I am fairly sure I originally chose 12 as that was the number of players who survived* the first edition, and so that became the benchmark). Secondly I am happy to keep the competition to people I know and their trusted friends, and of that field only the subset who want to play – the overall number might shrink but overall, there’s still a good few people who want to play. Frankly, I won’t be concerned until we only get 11 players one year…
The number of players each year graph is new and now updating live on the statistics page. See, this blog has done some good already 🙂
* thirteen played, but one was disqualified