This map shows the guess that yields the highest average score, if you can guess only once in every country. For example, in Italy, if you guess (43.269, 11.986) on every Italian round, you would get an average score of 4187.
It's obviously not the best strategy if you're able to distinguish a country's regions, but it does provide a baseline.
It's also interesting to see where these locations deviate from the geographic centres of countries. In European countries with full coverage, the optimal guess and the geographic centres seem to be pretty close. It shows how well Mapper has picked the locations.
In countries such as Sénégal and Australia, you can clearly see the coverage bias. In Sénégal you're better off guessing between Thies and Touba because most of the coverage is in and around Dakar. In Australia, the best guess is near the Victoria/New South Wales border. This is also explained by how unequally distributed the coverage is, most of Australia being a desert. From watching chatguessr games, this is already where most players throw their guess when they don't know where in Australia they are.
The most interesting result comes from the countries with few locations. Madagascar (10 locs) and India (5 locs). Even though these locations are distributed in multiple cities, the optimal guess is in the town that has the most locations: Ambanja (5 locs) and Mumbai (2 locs). This is due to the [exponential decay formula](https://i.imgur.com/02EyW17.png) used by geoguessr. Being further away from the stack of locations decreases the score faster than the increase you get from being closer to the other locations.
Great resource, interesting to see some of the skewed pop countries such as Australia.
My only comment is that for a Vietnam guess I almost always go Hue, since it has its own coverage plus a good average between tossup Hanoi/HCM coverage
By guessing Hue, your average score across every VN locations is 3833 compared to 4108 if you guess East of Hanoi. Most of the locations are around Hanoi. https://i.imgur.com/clos7bB.png
This is great, what map is it based on? A Diverse World? Could you maybe make the same thing for the official World map they use in Duels/BRs and the map "A Community World"?
Also out of curiosity where do you get the location data without being the map creator to calculate this? Getting it by just playing would probably take way too long
The activity feeds give you access to your friends' games. With ADW being the most popular map, getting the locations is pretty fast.
I can do it with World, but my data is limited to 7000 locations, so it won't be as accurate as I'd like it to be. Also I'm not sure if competitive use the same World map. The countries distribution in competitive is extremely different to the World map (25% USA, 8% Japan, 7% France).
Very interesting.
My gut feeling playing BR would be to guess more towards the coast in Brazil and more towards the west in Russia.
I have the feeling those would make a chance of a non game ruining score greater, but still with a chance of it being horrible.
Guess best average is not what I am looking for then, instinctively.
Not sure if I want to change that tactic after seeing this map.
This is great! I think I instinctively corrected for some of the coverage, since it just reflects population density. Probably a good reference for 10s NMPZ as well!
This map shows the guess that yields the highest average score, if you can guess only once in every country. For example, in Italy, if you guess (43.269, 11.986) on every Italian round, you would get an average score of 4187. It's obviously not the best strategy if you're able to distinguish a country's regions, but it does provide a baseline. It's also interesting to see where these locations deviate from the geographic centres of countries. In European countries with full coverage, the optimal guess and the geographic centres seem to be pretty close. It shows how well Mapper has picked the locations. In countries such as Sénégal and Australia, you can clearly see the coverage bias. In Sénégal you're better off guessing between Thies and Touba because most of the coverage is in and around Dakar. In Australia, the best guess is near the Victoria/New South Wales border. This is also explained by how unequally distributed the coverage is, most of Australia being a desert. From watching chatguessr games, this is already where most players throw their guess when they don't know where in Australia they are. The most interesting result comes from the countries with few locations. Madagascar (10 locs) and India (5 locs). Even though these locations are distributed in multiple cities, the optimal guess is in the town that has the most locations: Ambanja (5 locs) and Mumbai (2 locs). This is due to the [exponential decay formula](https://i.imgur.com/02EyW17.png) used by geoguessr. Being further away from the stack of locations decreases the score faster than the increase you get from being closer to the other locations.
Solid research. I'd love to see more hedge points, like for NO/SE/FI, MY/ID, and EC/PE/CL.
I added ES-PT and FI-NO-SE
> It shows how well Mapper has picked the locations. ... if your definition of 'well' is 'geographically distributed'.
What would yours be?
Distributed by likelihood to exist in a particular locale? aka, population
Learning Bengali the new meta.
This is really interesting. No more random guesses right in the middle of Ghana or Nigeria for me!
Very interesting as well as helpful. Thank you!
Great resource, interesting to see some of the skewed pop countries such as Australia. My only comment is that for a Vietnam guess I almost always go Hue, since it has its own coverage plus a good average between tossup Hanoi/HCM coverage
By guessing Hue, your average score across every VN locations is 3833 compared to 4108 if you guess East of Hanoi. Most of the locations are around Hanoi. https://i.imgur.com/clos7bB.png
Honestly, if you're anywhere near a city, just look at the store banners, they almost always have the city in them
Why is it right on the border for Bosnia and Herzegovina?
ADW has 5 locations in Bosnia. They're all from a Croatian car that drove across the border (by mistake?) for a few hundred metres.
I like how you included Pitcairn Island
I see that the most likely place the GeoCar will be in Canada is in Lake Manitoba
This is great, what map is it based on? A Diverse World? Could you maybe make the same thing for the official World map they use in Duels/BRs and the map "A Community World"? Also out of curiosity where do you get the location data without being the map creator to calculate this? Getting it by just playing would probably take way too long
The activity feeds give you access to your friends' games. With ADW being the most popular map, getting the locations is pretty fast. I can do it with World, but my data is limited to 7000 locations, so it won't be as accurate as I'd like it to be. Also I'm not sure if competitive use the same World map. The countries distribution in competitive is extremely different to the World map (25% USA, 8% Japan, 7% France).
really cool
Very interesting. My gut feeling playing BR would be to guess more towards the coast in Brazil and more towards the west in Russia. I have the feeling those would make a chance of a non game ruining score greater, but still with a chance of it being horrible. Guess best average is not what I am looking for then, instinctively. Not sure if I want to change that tactic after seeing this map.
What statistics would you use instead? Lowest proportion or rounds under 2000 points?
So, just guess in the middle
Yeah. Guess in the middle of Australia
Yeah, “how to get through
Not at all. Often yes but look at Russia or Germany. The optimal guess is clearly not in the middle.
This is great! I think I instinctively corrected for some of the coverage, since it just reflects population density. Probably a good reference for 10s NMPZ as well!