Thursday, October 13, 2011
Canuckian UFO Reports
So, some of you have been asking what the Canadian UFO Survey database looks like. Well, here it is.
Well, at least a small chunk of it. Pretty much like any other spreadsheet, except that it is coded down from UFO sighting reports. Most of is straightforward; there's data for the date, time, province, city/town, etc. Type is a modified Hynek classification. Duration, colour, number of witnesses, shape. Then the two categories included with a nod to Vallee: strangeness and reliability. Then the source of the report, the evaluation, and a brief, one-line summary of the sighting.
That's really all there is room for in a basic database about UFO reports. The actual detailed case reports are kept on file in paper format. Over 20 years of reports, at about eight inches per year, means there are several file drawers' worth by now. In 30 years, someone like Jan Aldrich or John Greenewald may someday scan them all and make them available online, like Blue Book. Or not.
As of last week, the end of September saw about 600 Canadian UFO reports in the database. If things continued on track, we would expect about 850 cases by the end of the year. That is not a record, but it's certainly high. That is not a "37% increase" or whatever some people are claiming. If anything, we've gone slightly down this year, but I suspect we've simply plateaued. My goal is to input all the 2010 ans 2009 reports that are backlogged, so that we can run stats on what the numbers and demographics of Canadian UFO cases really look like. What's most significant, is that we could have a homogeneous dataset covering almost 25 years that can be used and analysed to get a really good snapshot of the UFO phenomenon.
Well, at least a small chunk of it. Pretty much like any other spreadsheet, except that it is coded down from UFO sighting reports. Most of is straightforward; there's data for the date, time, province, city/town, etc. Type is a modified Hynek classification. Duration, colour, number of witnesses, shape. Then the two categories included with a nod to Vallee: strangeness and reliability. Then the source of the report, the evaluation, and a brief, one-line summary of the sighting.
That's really all there is room for in a basic database about UFO reports. The actual detailed case reports are kept on file in paper format. Over 20 years of reports, at about eight inches per year, means there are several file drawers' worth by now. In 30 years, someone like Jan Aldrich or John Greenewald may someday scan them all and make them available online, like Blue Book. Or not.
As of last week, the end of September saw about 600 Canadian UFO reports in the database. If things continued on track, we would expect about 850 cases by the end of the year. That is not a record, but it's certainly high. That is not a "37% increase" or whatever some people are claiming. If anything, we've gone slightly down this year, but I suspect we've simply plateaued. My goal is to input all the 2010 ans 2009 reports that are backlogged, so that we can run stats on what the numbers and demographics of Canadian UFO cases really look like. What's most significant, is that we could have a homogeneous dataset covering almost 25 years that can be used and analysed to get a really good snapshot of the UFO phenomenon.
Labels: UFO reports Canada data
