"“How many Larvitars did you catch during the Adventure Week?” results: grounding the case for an improved tracking-system."

#PokemonGO: Hey, travellers!! TL;DRAfter the “How many Larvitars did you catch during the Adventure Week?” survey I noticed that it raised an important question about scanner use and subsequently about the tracking-system. The results of the survey may not add much to biome and spawn rate research because of fundamental issues with the poll’s method, but it can sustain a case for a tracking-system rework, since there was a huge gap between players who caught 0 Larvitars and players who used scanners and caught numbers as high as 400 Larvitars. This disparity is something that needs attention.  To begin with, I must point out that my “small” survey received much more attention than I expected, getting more than 8,5k votes, and that happened even though it wasn’t really well constructed, as correctly pointed out by some fellow travellers on the original thread.The basic survey results can be seen here.It’s definitely worth noticing that the survey did differentiate between Larvitars caught during first couple of hours (increased spawn period) and the rest of the event. However, the results may be misleading because there are some things I didn’t do to improve the reliability of the poll. Here is what I should have done:Asked for seen Larvitars rather than caught ones;Additionally asked for Larvitars observed on sightings/nearby;Made a distinction between scanner users and regular users;Asked how many play hours per day;Asked which biome predominates on the hunting grounds (this is the trickiest since there aren’t objective definitions of biome and of types of biomes). Nonetheless I think there are some conclusions that can be reached with the thread. I’ve took some methodological measures to tackle the aforementioned mistakes: I’ve wrote down every possible data from the comments on the original thread, while individually asking every person who’s caught more than 10 Larvitars whether a scanner was used. With this, I could proceed with some calculations by sampling to get some more accurate results. In total, I’ve used 8605 votes from the poll and 256 reports on the comment section.Here is the data I extracted:Obs:Outliers are considered those who caught more than 30 Larvitars, unless differently specified.There was an assumption I had to make to figure out the numbers: I’ve considered caught Larvitars as seen Larvitars. This clearly leads to some issues, but I stand that it doesn’t invalidate the conclusion.I didn’t try to calculate how many poll respondents used scanners by sample because I thought the calculation would be too risky. Table 1. Average of caught Larvitar per player, without outliersData sourceLarvitars/player (w/o outliers)Poll reports, all users (w/o outliers)2,8Comments reports, all users (w/o outliers)2,8Comments reports, regular users (w/o outliers)2,1Comments reports, scanner users (w/o outliers)18,2 Table 2. Average of caught Larvitar per player, with outliersData sourceLarvitars/playerPoll reports, all users5,6Comments reports, all users9,9Comments reports, regular users2,6Comments reports, scanner users70,0Comments reports, scanner users (w/o outliers who caught 120+ Larvitars)35,3 Some other numbers and reportsBoth the poll and the comments’ analysis showed that 37% of respondents caught exactly 0 Larvitars, although the spawn rate was, at least slightly, increased (as analysed in some other threads12);Three users reported catching more than 120 Larvitars during the week, both used scanners;Four users who’ve caught between 15 and 35 Larvitars reported using a scanner indirectly, that is, someone they knew (personally or virtually) used a scanner and notified them of the nearby Larvitars;Most of the reports with a 30+ caught number have been downvoted, especially those who manifested using a scanner. Ok, OP, all of that may be interesting, but does it come down to any conclusions? Yes it does, but here is where it gets a bit complicated. I can’t really assume anything from the data, except approximate the average of Larvitars caught per player during the event. However, I can state that this huge disparity needs to be addressed. Thank you for reading, fellow traveller, and safe hunts! edit1: minor text fixes.edit2: added missing hyperlink.edit3: removed the actual case for not abiding to TSR guidelines :) via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2sU92Se