The story: Five days since the last round and waiting for the next one makes me want to do something, and seeing posts a few days ago on "no upcoming contests", I somehow wanted to see if we really are having fewer contests. Below are the findings❗

The data counts for all contests with a div. [#] included in their names and all global rounds.

In specific, I counted their divisions, date, and participant number, and then visualized the data into two types of graphs:

1. Frequency count of rated contests by divisions, based on their month and year.

2. Average number of participants for a division in each month of year.

Overall distribution

There seems to be no clear trends of frequencies within a year (e.g., I was expecting there will be more during summer holidays), however, there is a faint decline in contests over the past two years 💔:

Division 2 Distribution

Here are the distribution and average # of participants for div. 2.

A clear pattern is that there are more participants during the beginning & end of the year and the summer holiday, as shown by W-shaped curve for each year. On a greater scale, the average number of participants is also increasing steadily over year, with a huge boost in 2020 (curious why it happened, COVID perhaps?)❗

However, despite the stable amount of division 2 contests from 2020-2023, we have fewer in 2024. There has not being a single month with less than 6 div. 2 rounds from 2021 to 2023, but this year we already have four!

Division 1 Distribution

Here're also the distribution and average # of participants for div. 1.

I haven't participated in any div. 1 contests yet, and therefore can't make clear explanations for the weird trend of participants # which took a boost in 2015 and 2020 but then declined for a while (would love to hear about some possible explanations).

Again, however, the number of div. 1 contests is going down this year. Only 1 rated contest per month for five months this year is too hard to bear. This worries us potential div. 1 participants as well!

Are we having fewer rated contests?

From these graphs, the answer is sadly yes. However, the purpose of this post is not to blame anyone for the trend. I find it enjoyable to explore all the trends and patterns (there are definitely more) and also feel motivated seeing an increasing number of participants (as I'm one of them). However, with these steady increases in the # of participants, I think that we should have more contests, definitely to an extent that is no less than the previous years.

Do you want more rated contests?

• Yes

• Now is fine

• No

Which one would you want to have more the most?

• Div. 1

• Div. 2

• Div. 3

• Div. 4

Would love to see comments on this or cool patterns in the graphics