Analytical Research - Sightings Database Part 2

[BobbyO]

And that holds in lots of places in the PNW G..

[MIB]

There aren't any winter sighting areas that don't have year around sightings.    Unless there's some missing piece, the numbers in those places in winter would be reflective of the total for everywhere in fall, spring, and summer ... but they're not ... they're not even close.  

 

One of the possibilities is sampling / investigation errors, in other words, the reports are there but they don't meet your rigorous SSR standards so they are being culled from the data.  If that is the case, what factors, what differences from the included reports, cause those reports not to be included?   Is there something about either bigfoot behavior or human behavior that can be gleaned from a second glance at those reports?   Is it a form of confirmation bias at work?   (That may not be a popular question .. I know.)  

 

With the SSR, do you have a way to present "confidence layers" of data?   In other words, can you say "here's a sheet with our best reports", then add another layer over top with the "90%" reports, then another to include the "80%" reports, and so on to see how map fills in as the standard becomes less rigorous?    Do you have a way to do that season by season to see if there is some seasonal component you need to account for differently to get an accurate depiction of what is really happening?

 

.. just kind of walking around the thing to see if a different perspective sheds more light on it.

 

MIB

[BobbyO]

If they're out there in the public domain, they're in the SSR MIB, I can assure you.

 

We have an internal scoring system regarding a type of "confidence layer" but it doesn't affect them going in to the database or them showing up.

 

We grade reports internally by a number of things in a scoring system out of 10 to give a report "better scores".

 

Length of sighting.

Class A/B.

Number of witnesses.

Report investigation none/phone/on site.

Memory recollection timing IE was the report filed within 2 weeks/2 months etc.

 

It's not flawless of course and I personally am not a huge fan but it's what we have so far where what you're talking about is concerned.

 

One of my focusses soon would be however excluding from analysis (at times) what I deem as "chance encounters" (road crossings ?) and instead looking at reports that would maybe be more deliberate and reports that would may be more so on the animals terms more so (witness camping/hiking/witness own property).

 

Maybe that changes things more so, and in fact from what I've looked at so far, the numbers point to certain factors that could show an inquisitive yet shy animal and I say that because of the strong numbers where "time of day/camping" reports are at for example.

[BobbyO]

Just to give you an idea about "non chance" encounters, the best we can say they're "non chance" anyway unlike we would a road crossing which would have to be a "chance encounter".

 

I'll run the overall numbers in brackets alongside these numbers from reports from witnesses camping..

 

Gonna narrow it down even more as i'm sure we'd all agree that camping is an activity done by humans far more in the summer, so i'll run the summer numbers only.

 

WA State Total Reports : 61 - (235)

 

Daylight Report %'s : 12 - (48)

Actual Visual Sighting Report %'s : 8 - (37)

 

Pretty big jumps on two very important search parameters that affect reports right there, especially the Daylight Report %'s as WA State averages around 15 hours of sunlight per day in the Summer.

 

[Redbone]

8 hours ago, MIB said:

One of the possibilities is sampling / investigation errors, in other words, the reports are there but they don't meet your rigorous SSR standards so they are being culled from the data.  If that is the case, what factors, what differences from the included reports, cause those reports not to be included?   Is there something about either bigfoot behavior or human behavior that can be gleaned from a second glance at those reports?   Is it a form of confirmation bias at work?   (That may not be a popular question .. I know.)  

There is some confirmation bias at work anyway. A group might not publish a report that indicates that a sasquatch attacked or abducted somebody, or a sighting that was also associated with a UFO sighting if those things don't fit the group narrative. We are dealing with an amateur army of enthusiasts to even get these reports.

 

I don't cull reports. If they get published by the organization (for the most part) they get an entry. I might skip those where I can't narrow down a reasonable location.

If I rated an entry "low" there was something I didn't like about it, but it's in the SSR anyway. My opinion is not the only one that counts.

There are a few that are "late 70's", where they can't even give a year, that still may have an entry if the location is reasonable.

If you want "better" reports, you might consider skipping the ones from the early days of the BFRO, where many were published without investigator follow up. These are probably not easy to exclude at the moment. I would enter "unknown" for investigator, and other people entered "N/A". In hindsight, I should have separated the ones with no investigator comment at all vs. the ones with comment from an unnamed investigator. There are plenty of both.

 

If I was interested in where they were season by season. I'd limit the search to witness activity "driving", which are as Bobby says, chance encounters, There are a few spring - fall reports that happen in areas that have closed roads in the winter. They may be there but people that could encounter them are not.

 

A thought I had about seasonal reports is that the SSR entries are based on season dates, not months. December 1-19 is "Fall" but when I'm shoveling "Fall Snow" it sure feels like winter.

It might be interesting to do monthly searches "for a different perspective".

Dec, Jan, Feb = Winter 

Mar, Apr, May = Spring

Jun, Jul, Aug = Summer

Oct, Nov, Dec - Fall

 

I'm working a little bit on the Oregon Bigfoot database. These entries are a bit frustrating in that practically NONE of them get investigator follow up. They consistently score low because of that, but I think they are valuable anyway.

 

Edit to add: There may be a lot of potential sasquatch activity in areas that don't show up in the databases, simply because the group would like to keep these locations secret. I have "heard" of many encounters in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota that are not published.This is from people who get out often for outings to see what they can see. On Sunday, I was dropping off a recorder in some local woods and heard a tree crash when I turned to leave. A few minutes later I recorded two daytime wood knocks. That might be enough to get a class B report, but I won't file one. A BFRO investigator was with me at the time. (tree crash audio Link - I was doing side by side mic testing - I have built a microphone with a built in low pass filter to quiet the bugs)

Edited September 6, 2017 by Redbone

[BobbyO]

Just a head up Red for that Oregon database.

 

I found some duplicates in there previously where i guess the witnesses had submitted the report to multiple research groups with sometimes different wording.

 

The date, location and then report itself is always the giveaway but i'd always check the date first against what we have already as i'm sure there'll be more duplicates in there..

 

Going back to those WA Camping numbers for a moment.

 

The way i read it, and it's just my opinion and nothing else as i may be totally wrong, but i read it as possibly "non chance encounters" like what a witness when camping report would be classed as, being that of an animal that doesn't overly show itself and prefers to stay out of human sight when and where possible.

 

It's an animal that would do this under the cover of darkness yet also shows an inquisitive side from a safe distance and has no issue communicating with others of its kind, with 90% of reports being vocalizations and/or knocks/claps/slaps, and 93% of those coming from hours of darkness.

[Redbone]

21 minutes ago, BobbyO said:

Just a head up Red for that Oregon database.

 

I found some duplicates in there previously where i guess the witnesses had submitted the report to multiple research groups with sometimes different wording.

 

The date, location and then report itself is always the giveaway but i'd always check the date first against what we have already as i'm sure there'll be more duplicates in there..

I've already found a bunch. Those entries are done anyway because it's got a different link. One thing we should maybe work for is being able to add multiple 'web links' for these duplicate reports.

I put (See BFRO xxxx) in the witness occupation field on those duplicates that I found. There are several with the BFRO and NAWAC as well. We can address these duplicates later on. Most of them already had SSR entries for both before I got there.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Redbone

[BobbyO]

 

Add that CA and OR  offer the same kind of numbers and it starts to get interesting.

 

CA Total Reports : 92 - (203)

 

Daylight Report %'s : 14 - (40)

Actual Visual Sighting Report %'s : 27 - (41)

 

OR Total Reports : 35 - (132)

 

Daylight Report %'s : 21 - (57)

Actual Visual Sighting Report %'s : 9 - (39)

[bipedalist]

Agree with BobbyO BF own the night, they can get so close to you they can count your nose hairs at night and don't really give a hoot about noise.   They cackle and have a blast when we are sleeping and snoring. 

[wiiawiwb]

I wonder if anyone has tried making an audio recording of snoring (several hours) and playing it at night from within a tent at camp. Prior to that switching on the snoring, you sneak away from the campsite and waiting around with a FLIR to see if it lures in a sasquatch. It might even work!

Edited September 13, 2017 by wiiawiwb

[hiflier]

Thinking outside the box is a very cool way to go wb.

[bipedalist]

As I had an incident where a probable Sasquatch did imitate my snoring and woke me up  such that I recognized what it was doing (and others have reported similar encounters/behavior) I believe the snoring in an occupied or unoccupied tent with audio recording would work.   This occurred early on in my investigations pre-2008 when I was just learning the nuances of appropriate digital audio recorders and saving audio files so I missed that capture. .  

[bipedalist]