Well, it is a wet and dreary Sunday here, so I thought I'd cheer myself up with some jolly statistics. Sad, I know. 
My prompt was the general concern, recently expressed, about the lack of entries to the Challenges, so, now we've just had the 100th Challenge, I thought I go back and see what the numbers have actually been like since the first one in March 2010. So I've gone through them all and created a spreadsheet of the theme, number of entries and the winner of each. A summary of the results is as follows:
Challenges 1 to 25 Least number of entries: 4, Most entries: 17, Average: 10
Challenges 26 to 50 Least number of entries: 3, Most entries: 20, Average: 9
Challenges 51 to 75 Least number of entries: 3, Most entries: 28, Average: 12
Challenges 76 to 100 Least number of entries: 3, Most entries: 11, Average: 7
Overall Average number of entries: 10
So, we have always had Challenges with only a few entries, but what we seem to be missing recently are the occasional bumper entries. So, if we want to continue with them (and I do), let's all make a concerted effort.
One heartening thing I found was that there have been 51 different winners across the 100 Challenges so it does get spread around quite nicely. The most number of wins by anyone is 7 (take a bow, pelliott1954
). It was also nice to see lots of names consistently appearing over the 5 years (for example, the winner of Challenge no 1 was Chris J, who is still chugging along today).
I expected to see the same subject matters cropping up a lot, but we are clearly a very imaginative lot. There were a couple of 'Still Life', a couple 'Christmas Card' and a couple '50mm lens' but apart from that it was very varied. And I have to say that there have been some cracking images entered over the years, and all entered and judged in excellent humour.
So, what does that all tell us? Not a lot really, but it filled my day. I hope that in another 5 years or so someone (maybe me) looks back at Challenges 101 to 200 and they are still going strong.
My prompt was the general concern, recently expressed, about the lack of entries to the Challenges, so, now we've just had the 100th Challenge, I thought I go back and see what the numbers have actually been like since the first one in March 2010. So I've gone through them all and created a spreadsheet of the theme, number of entries and the winner of each. A summary of the results is as follows:
Challenges 1 to 25 Least number of entries: 4, Most entries: 17, Average: 10
Challenges 26 to 50 Least number of entries: 3, Most entries: 20, Average: 9
Challenges 51 to 75 Least number of entries: 3, Most entries: 28, Average: 12
Challenges 76 to 100 Least number of entries: 3, Most entries: 11, Average: 7
Overall Average number of entries: 10
So, we have always had Challenges with only a few entries, but what we seem to be missing recently are the occasional bumper entries. So, if we want to continue with them (and I do), let's all make a concerted effort.
One heartening thing I found was that there have been 51 different winners across the 100 Challenges so it does get spread around quite nicely. The most number of wins by anyone is 7 (take a bow, pelliott1954
). It was also nice to see lots of names consistently appearing over the 5 years (for example, the winner of Challenge no 1 was Chris J, who is still chugging along today).I expected to see the same subject matters cropping up a lot, but we are clearly a very imaginative lot. There were a couple of 'Still Life', a couple 'Christmas Card' and a couple '50mm lens' but apart from that it was very varied. And I have to say that there have been some cracking images entered over the years, and all entered and judged in excellent humour.
So, what does that all tell us? Not a lot really, but it filled my day. I hope that in another 5 years or so someone (maybe me) looks back at Challenges 101 to 200 and they are still going strong.
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