Active geocaches worldwideUS counties reporting good air quality days
Geocaches hidden in parks and good-air-quality days in American counties, both compounding their counts. There is a person, in a county with notably clean air, walking through a state forest looking for a Tupperware container with a logbook. Both stories are doing fine.
Active geocaches worldwide grew from a few hundred thousand in 2005 to over three million today as the smartphone era replaced handheld GPS units and lowered the cost of participation. US counties reporting good-air-quality days expanded across the same window thanks to Clean Air Act enforcement, the long retreat of coal-fired power, and reduced industrial emissions, with the share of monitored days rated good rising notably between 2005 and 2022. Both reflect 21st-century progress in different domains: a hobby got easier to participate in, and the air got easier to breathe. A clean walk in the woods became more of both.
Some metrics improve quietly. The forest got cleaner. The hobby got busier. Most progress arrives without a press release.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Active geocaches worldwide” vs “US counties reporting good air quality days” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
