Luna

Update for May 2020: Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder I'm trying something new with this update. Through the power of protected ranges, the cells for entering test points (i.e. the ones in the two boxes surrounded by borders) are now editable by everyone. Hopefully that helps with collaboration, since everyone can be using the same google sheet. There's always the option of making a private copy (File -> Make a copy) just like before if you prefer that instead. After you've entered your tests points (or someone else entered test points) give it a few seconds to calculate. It may give strange results while it's calculating, but everything should be fine once it's done. Let me know if you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or have any questions or comments. The moon hotspot affects the mars hotspot a LOT, and vice versa. In fact if one hotspot is found, the number of possibilities for the other one is reduced to 4 maximum (often fewer), and because of the skewed probability distribution, you can usually find the hotspot in 1 try. So definitely check out the other thread. Most people don't realize that the other celestial body affects them.

A 50% point strategy: TL;DR: If you only have 50% points, try these: -45, 39 45, 20 This is ONLY for the case where no points have been found with >50% effectiveness. Otherwise just use the moon & mars hotspot finder google sheet. As always, check the moon thread cause they may have found a >50% point on their end which also eliminates the need to use this strategy. Here are 2 good points to try if only 50% effectiveness points have been found: -45, 39 (mars southern hemisphere test point) 45, 20 (mars northern hemisphere test point) Do NOT use these points on the Moon. If you try both of these points, it's guaranteed that at least one of them will be >50%, no matter where the hotspot is or what month it is. Even if you're starting with literally zero information, 2 guesses is all it takes to get a point that's >50% and then things go fast from there. If you already have a 50% point, try the test point in the opposite hemisphere first. If you already have 50% points in both hemispheres, try entering them into the google sheet, eyeball which hemisphere has more possible hotspots, and try the test point in that hemisphere. Or just pick the southern hemisphere point if that's too much work. It's not the most optimal strategy, but it only takes 2 guesses max and doesn't require any extra math cause it's always the exact same 2 points every single month. Note: Neither of these points are possible hotspots. They won't come up 100%. But if you only have 50% points, the chance of getting lucky and getting 100% is very small anyway, so it's better to maximize your chance of finding a >50% point instead which allows you to find the hotspot with fewer guesses. More details if you're curious: The northern hemisphere test point is the point in the northern hemisphere with the lowest chance of coming up 50% if you're starting with no information (42.97% chance of coming up 50%). It's actually tied with 9 other northern hemisphere points with the same chance of 50%, which are (48, 13), (47, 15), (47, 16), (46, 18), (46, 19), (45, 21), (44, 23), (43, 25), (42, 27). Just pick one of the 10 northern hemisphere points. There's no need to try them all. If the northern hemisphere point does come up 50%, it actually eliminates ALL the possible hotspots in the northern hemisphere plus some of the ones in the southern hemisphere near the equator, leaving only 485 possible hotspots, all of which are in the southern hemisphere. For the southern hemisphere I did something a bit different. I picked a point with the lowest number of possible hotspots remaining if it comes up 50% (479 points remaining). That's because the point with the lowest chance of coming up 50% (-45, 40 with a 34.98% chance of coming up 50%) actually doesn't eliminate all the possible hotspots in the southern hemisphere, so it doesn't complement the northern hemisphere point to form a pair of points that are guaranteed to produce a >50% point. The point I picked is tied for second lowest chance of coming up 50% though, at 35.74% chance, so it's pretty close. There are 11 other points that also have 479 points remaining if they come up 50%, and those 11 points also tied for second lowest chance of coming up 50%, along with 3 other points that are also tied for second lowest chance of coming up 50% but have >479 points remaining if they come up 50%. If the southern hemisphere point does come up 50%, it eliminates the possible hotspots in the southern hemisphere plus some of the northern hemisphere points near the equator, leaving only 479 possible hotspots, all of which are in the northern hemisphere. Both of the points won't come up 50%, cause that would eliminate all the possible hotspots.

A 50% point strategy: TL;DR: If you only have 50% points, try these: -46, -131 46, -153 This is ONLY for the case where no points have been found with >50% effectiveness. Otherwise just use the moon & mars hotspot finder google sheet. As always, check the mars thread cause they may have found a >50% point on their end which also eliminates the need to use this strategy. Here are 2 good points to try if only 50% effectiveness points have been found: -46, -131 (moon southern hemisphere test point) 46, -153 (moon northern hemisphere test point) Do NOT use these points on Mars. If you try both of these points, it's guaranteed that at least one of them will be >50%, no matter where the hotspot is or what month it is. Even if you're starting with literally zero information, 2 guesses is all it takes to get a point that's >50% and then things go fast from there. If you already have a 50% point, try the test point in the opposite hemisphere first. If you already have 50% points in both hemispheres, try entering them into the google sheet, eyeball which hemisphere has more possible hotspots, and try the test point in that hemisphere. Or just pick the southern hemisphere point if that's too much work. It's not the most optimal strategy, but it only takes 2 guesses max and doesn't require any extra math cause it's always the exact same 2 points every single month. Note: Neither of these points are possible hotspots. They won't come up 100%. But if you only have 50% points, the chance of getting lucky and getting 100% is very small anyway, so it's better to maximize your chance of finding a >50% point instead which allows you to find the hotspot with fewer guesses. More details if you're curious: These are the points in each hemisphere that have the lowest chance of coming up 50% if you're starting with no information. The southern hemisphere point has a 34.94% chance of coming 50% and the northern hemisphere point has a 39.76% chance of coming up 50%. The northern hemisphere point is actually tied with 5 other northern hemisphere points with the same chance of 50%, which are (47, -156), (46, -154), (45 -151), (44 -149), (43, -147). Just pick one of the 6 northern hemisphere points. There's no need to try them all. If the southern hemisphere point does come up 50%, it actually eliminates ALL the possible hotspots in the southern hemisphere plus some of the northern hemisphere points near the equator, leaving only 479 possible hotspots, all of which are in the northern hemisphere. Likewise, if the northern hemisphere point does come up 50%, it actually eliminates ALL the possible hotspots in the northern hemisphere plus some of the ones in the southern hemisphere near the equator, leaving only 482 possible hotspots, all of which are in the southern hemisphere. Both of the points won't come up 50%, cause that would eliminate all the possible hotspots.

September 2019 update is up: Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder To use it make a copy ( File -> Make a copy ...), then enter your test spots and give it a few seconds to calculate. Please do this even if you have an older version, because your old copy won't automatically update to the newest version. Let me know if you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or have any questions or comments. The moon hotspot affects the mars hotspot a LOT, and vice versa. In fact, if one hotspot is found, the number of possibilities for the other one is reduced to 4 maximum (often fewer), and because of the skewed probability distribution, you can usually find the hotspot in 1 try. So definitely check out the other thread. Most people don't realize that the other celestial body affects them.

September 2019 update is up: Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder To use it make a copy ( File -> Make a copy ...), then enter your test spots and give it a few seconds to calculate. Please do this even if you have an older version, because your old copy won't automatically update to the newest version. Let me know if you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or have any questions or comments. The moon hotspot affects the mars hotspot a LOT, and vice versa. In fact, if one hotspot is found, the number of possibilities for the other one is reduced to 4 maximum (often fewer), and because of the skewed probability distribution, you can usually find the hotspot in 1 try. So definitely check out the other thread. Most people don't realize that the other celestial body affects them.

Ok, that's weird. (-55,101) worked last time the hotspot was there back in Dec 2012 (link). Maybe the server side code is running on a different CPU now. Different CPUs have different floating point rounding errors. That's bad news for the spreadsheet because it means the floating point rounding errors for the latitudes may be wrong, and worse, they could be different every month even if the hotspot is a repeat from a previous monnth. For now the spreadsheet values seem to be very good guesses, but we'll see how well that works going forward. At least people know about the rounding error and can adjust if what the spreadsheet suggests doesn't work. Longitudes shouldn't need a floating point correction due to how the great circle formula works. For latitudes start with the closest integer and try +1e-8, -1e-8, +2e-8, -2e-8, etc. (e.g. for -55, try -55, -54.99999999, -55.00000001, -54.99999998, -55.00000002). If +/-2e-8 doesn't get it, you can go on to +/-3e-8 and so on, although if you get that far there's probably some other problem happening.

Hello everyone, it's Luna (formerly known as Chintan). It's been just over a year and a half since I updated the Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder, and while the previous version seems to be working great, I think it's time for an update since we've had 19 new data points since then. So here's the new version (it's the exact same link as before): Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder To use it make a copy ( File -> Make a copy ...), then enter your test spots and give it a few seconds to calculate. Please do this even if you have an older version, because your old copy won't automatically update. Let me know if you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or have any questions or comments. The moon hotspot affects the mars hotspot a LOT, and vice versa. In fact, if one hotspot is found, the number of possibilities for the other one is reduced to 4 maximum (often fewer), and because of the skewed probability distribution, you can usually find the hotspot in 1 try. So definitely check out the other thread. Most people don't realize that the other celestial body affects them. Updates: List of Previously Observed hotspots updated - This is perhaps the biggest change. If you've used this tool before you may have noticed that the hotspots observed in previous months have a much higher probability. Hotspots tend to repeat, so if something was seen in a previous month, the hotspot is more likely to appear there again. There have been 12 newly observed locations in the 19 months since the last update, and all of these have been added to the spreadsheet. This means if one of those 12 locations turns out to be the hotspot again in the future (which will almost certainly happen at some point) you can nail it in fewer tries. Elimination of 30 possible locations, reducing the list from 1282 to 1252 possible locations - This isn't as big a deal as you might think, because those 30 locations all had low probabilities anyway. But it's still nice to see the list get shorter and shorter. And it's a one way change. Once possible locations are gone, they are gone forever and the list can only shrink, never grow. Maybe one day we can get down to the minimum of 1056 possible locations. May 2019 might have been an annoying month because the location with 90.5% odds only gave 99%, and the actual hotspot was the one with 9.5% odds. But the good thing is, those low odds locations are the ones that eliminate possible hotspots. Since they are on the fringes of the probability distribution, they provider stronger data than the boring, routine ones in the middle of the distribution. The last time locations were eliminated was a whopping 26 months ago, back in March 2017, so it is a rare occurrence. Update of probability distribution based on newest data - I calculate the probabilities using a Bayesian model, and adding new data updates the distribution. Having more data narrows the distribution, but you're unlikely to notice the difference. We have 117 months worth of data now, and I updated the probability distribution based on all that data.

Hello everyone, it's Luna (formerly known as Chintan). It's been just over a year and a half since I updated the Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder, and while the previous version seems to be working great, I think it's time for an update since we've had 19 new data points since then. So here's the new version (it's the exact same link as before): Moon & Mars Hotspot Finder To use it make a copy ( File -> Make a copy ...), then enter your test spots and give it a few seconds to calculate. Please do this even if you have an older version, because your old copy won't automatically update. Let me know if you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or have any questions or comments. The moon hotspot affects the mars hotspot a LOT, and vice versa. In fact, if one hotspot is found, the number of possibilities for the other one is reduced to 4 maximum (often fewer), and because of the skewed probability distribution, you can usually find the hotspot in 1 try. So definitely check out the other thread. Most people don't realize that the other celestial body affects them. Updates: List of Previously Observed hotspots updated - This is perhaps the biggest change. If you've used this tool before you may have noticed that the hotspots observed in previous months have a much higher probability. Hotspots tend to repeat, so if something was seen in a previous month, the hotspot is more likely to appear there again. There have been 12 newly observed locations in the 19 months since the last update, and all of these have been added to the spreadsheet. This means if one of those 12 locations turns out to be the hotspot again in the future (which will almost certainly happen at some point) you can nail it in fewer tries. Elimination of 30 possible locations, reducing the list from 1282 to 1252 possible locations - This isn't as big a deal as you might think, because those 30 locations all had low probabilities anyway. But it's still nice to see the list get shorter and shorter. And it's a one way change. Once possible locations are gone, they are gone forever and the list can only shrink, never grow. Maybe one day we can get down to the minimum of 1056 possible locations. May 2019 might have been an annoying month because the location with 90.5% odds only gave 99%, and the actual hotspot was the one with 9.5% odds. But the good thing is, those low odds locations are the ones that eliminate possible hotspots. Since they are on the fringes of the probability distribution, they provider stronger data than the boring, routine ones in the middle of the distribution. The last time locations were eliminated was a whopping 26 months ago, back in March 2017, so it is a rare occurrence. Update of probability distribution based on newest data - I calculate the probabilities using a Bayesian model, and adding new data updates the distribution. Having more data narrows the distribution, but you're unlikely to notice the difference. We have 117 months worth of data now, and I updated the probability distribution based on all that data.