XPost: alt.ufo.reports

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
- The number of UFO sightings seen in different regions depend on the size
of the local population and its distribution. But across the USA
the latitude plays an even more important part.
- Sightings density tends to increase toward the N, W, and E but S.
- Other data from Canada suggests sightings hug the coasts up there
indicating objects seen in the US may be coming along the coasts
from the (far) north, in particular the Bering Sea.


A few months back when I started churning through the numbers for UFO
sightings I contacted quite a few of the UFO organisations around the
world. One of the nice replies came from CUFOS.ORG -- the group founded
by Allen Hynek et al back in the 1970s.

Mark Rodeghier at CUFOS described the analysis of the data up to this
point as "in its infancy" and sent me one of those papers that are
lauded for meticulous scholarship. IOW something I could not have the
patience to do in a mn years. :)

The paper looked at trying to reconcile why some researchers find that
UFO sightings numbers across different regions/countries are related
to population density and some do not. Some find a +ve correlation and
some a -ve correlation.

The paper went through dozens of research efforts and attempted to
reconcile what was happening.

I recalled all this when I saw a headline flash across my screen in
the last week proclaiming Idaho the UFO capital of the USA.
At least for 2020.

At an early point in the "churning" my s/w had pointed out there was a
distinct latitude-dependency in UFO sightings across N America.
Dividing the data up by state across years 1930-2020 showed the number
of sightings per state increased northward, eastward and westward.
Although sightings were attracted to coastlines, esp the Pacific coast,
there was no trend toward the Gulf Coast.

<http://kym.massbus.org/UFO/map.gif>

It therefore turned out to be sighting density was not just dependent on
local population density, but on latitude. And -- fly in ointment --
population density is dependent on latitude. E.g. the world's
population has largely clustered around latitude ~45N as a compromise
between avg temperatures and availability of water and agricultural
land. The density falls off going N or S from +45.

But I've now thrown a 2nd gen mix of data through the stats programs and
a reasonable model for at least the USA has popped out. It again
confirms there is a trend in increased sightings going N and W across
the country. It seems that allowing for population and population
density the UFO's are tending to come from the NW.

A similar effort with the Canada data from a 2nd curated source suggests a
very similar pattern up there. Allowing for population and population density UFO sightings in the frigid north tend to hug the coasts indicating
anything reaching the US might have come down from the Arctic, perhaps
in particular the Bering Sea where local ocean and weather conditions
between Russia and Alaska seem to significantly modulate the flow of
things seen across the US.


The sighting density model for the US is as follows:


REWEIGHTED LEAST SQUARES BASED ON THE LMS
*****************************************
VARIABLE COEFFICIENT STAND. ERROR T - VALUE P - VALUE
----------------------------------------------------------------------
lat 0.41529 0.12501 3.32203 0.00206
lon -0.07626 0.04169 -1.82901 0.07569
pop 3.10950 0.14535 21.39392 0.00000
area -23.42544 10.85533 -2.15797 0.03768
CONSTANT -19.93543 7.68344 -2.59460 0.01361
WEIGHTED SUM OF SQUARES = 311.11493
DEGREES OF FREEDOM = 36
SCALE ESTIMATE = 2.93974
COEFFICIENT OF DETERMINATION (R SQUARED) = 0.93677
THE F-VALUE = 133.337 (WITH 4 AND 36 DF) P - VALUE = 0.00000
THERE ARE 41 POINTS WITH NON-ZERO WEIGHT.
AVERAGE WEIGHT = 0.80392

(This s/w can not display text so you have to guess which line is which
state; they are either ordered alphabetically or by latitude).

OBSERVED ESTIMATED RESIDUAL NO RES/SC WEIGHT
count/yr count/yr
6.04290 6.08698 -0.04408 1 -0.01 1.0
12.98570 14.14938 -1.16368 2 -0.40 1.0
9.84290 9.60738 0.23552 3 0.08 1.0
42.32860 20.52796 21.80064 4 7.42 0.0
140.14290 119.76287 20.38003 5 6.93 0.0
28.38570 18.27372 10.11198 6 3.44 0.0
18.92860 13.95098 4.97762 7 1.69 1.0
1.14290 4.10019 -2.95729 8 -1.01 1.0
3.95710 4.99765 -1.04055 9 -0.35 1.0
77.27139 57.39838 19.87301 10 6.76 0.0
25.85710 29.86574 -4.00864 11 -1.36 1.0
6.61430 5.05934 1.55496 12 0.53 1.0
11.20000 12.91805 -1.71805 13 -0.58 1.0
12.57140 10.24589 2.32551 14 0.79 1.0
36.95710 42.35933 -5.40223 15 -1.84 1.0
21.74290 22.79092 -1.04802 16 -0.36 1.0
10.51430 10.52305 -0.00875 17 0.00 1.0
15.65710 14.90558 0.75152 18 0.26 1.0
10.35710 13.39024 -3.03314 19 -1.03 1.0
25.04290 23.68872 1.35418 20 0.46 1.0
17.54290 20.35501 -2.81211 21 -0.96 1.0
11.10000 7.28952 3.81048 22 1.30 1.0
33.27140 33.96189 -0.69049 23 -0.23 1.0
19.91430 21.20827 -1.29397 24 -0.44 1.0
24.92860 20.26028 4.66832 25 1.59 1.0
7.17140 8.71325 -1.54185 26 -0.52 1.0
9.38570 7.70395 1.68175 27 0.57 1.0
35.74290 30.43821 5.30469 28 1.80 1.0
2.37140 8.04880 -5.67740 29 -1.93 1.0
6.28570 8.65065 -2.36495 30 -0.80 1.0
10.78570 7.44630 3.33940 31 1.14 1.0
26.04290 29.95661 -3.91371 32 -1.33 1.0
15.22860 6.26941 8.95918 33 3.05 0.0
14.68570 11.05554 3.63016 34 1.23 1.0
50.71430 63.28479 -12.57049 35 -4.28 0.0
39.84290 38.16580 1.67710 36 0.57 1.0
13.28570 12.58060 0.70510 37 0.24 1.0
30.80000 17.85785 12.94215 38 4.40 0.0
46.44290 41.47988 4.96302 39 1.69 1.0
6.07140 6.07132 0.00008 40 0.00 1.0
23.74290 14.42216 9.32074 41 3.17 0.0
3.70000 6.89180 -3.19180 42 -1.09 1.0
20.88570 20.75756 0.12814 43 0.04 1.0
51.62860 76.55006 -24.92146 44 -8.48 0.0
14.18570 12.34830 1.83740 45 0.63 1.0
25.15710 26.47365 -1.31655 46 -0.45 1.0
6.14290 5.63145 0.51145 47 0.17 1.0
56.92860 29.13731 27.79129 48 9.45 0.0
22.81430 21.86764 0.94666 49 0.32 1.0
8.25710 7.41730 0.83980 50 0.29 1.0
3.51430 5.52991 -2.01561 51 -0.69 1.0


The model claims to "explain" (R SQ) more than 90% of the
state-to-state variation in sightings (this model is based on
1950-2020 av sightings per year for each state+DC with no adjustments).
This is a fairly good fit as can be seen from the "observed vs expected"
part of the listing.

The "SCALE" of ~3 means each state is estimated within +-3
sightings/yr in most cases. But the "WEIGHT" of 80% says ~10 states
are moderate to severe outliers. When the "RES/SC" column is much over
1 there's a problem with the fit for that state. E.g. one state gets

8! The model predicts 76.6 sightings per year when in fact only

51.6/yr have been observed. This might not seem like a big error to
us, but the S/W is totally upset. :)

The overall pattern in the coefficients shows sightings/yr increases
going N. For each 10 deg N sightings increase around 4/yr. Similarly,
for each 10 deg further W sightings increase ~.8/yr. For each 1mn
state population there are an average 4 sightings per yr. And for
each 1 mn mi2 of area of the state about 23 sightings are apparently missed.

Models that explicitly include "population density", rather than
population and area separately, are nowhere near as accurate as this
model. The typical R2 (depending on how it's done) is around .5 rather
than .9. If you try to include population, area and also population
density (persons/mi2) this stats program shows the P-VAL of around .7.
Meaning it's "70% irrelevant" to include popden as well as pop & area.
So the model above is preferred.

In a later post we'll look at similar models across countries. Again,
there are interesting patterns that suggest UFO's congregate around
the poles and fly south in the N Hem and N in the S Hem and seem to
prefer the mid-Pacific to the mid-Atlantic. Another nexus shows up in
the N Indian which may explain some of those sightings in Azerbaijan
and Iran we've seen in those newly-released CIA files. :)

--
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)