BFRO Bigfoot
3,659 reports. The most self-exciting dataset we've tested.
Decision Chain: BFRO
Ingest all BFRO reports with day-level timestamps. 3,659 reports spanning decades of field reports.
3,659 reports ingested. Day-level precision.
Fit a self-exciting point process. Separates independent (background) from triggered (contagion) events.
Branching ratio 0.988. Half-life 29.9 days. Only 25 of 3,659 reports are independent.
Check weather data for heaping and instrument artifacts.
cloud_cover 76% at round numbers (heaping detected). precip_intensity = precip_probability in 51% of rows.
Near-total social contagion
The most self-exciting dataset in the study. 99.3% of Bigfoot reports are triggered by prior reports, with a 29.9-day half-life suggesting month-scale media and word-of-mouth contagion cycles. Only 25 reports out of 3,659 are genuinely independent — people reporting without being prompted by other reports. The weather data has severe quality issues (heaping, copied values) that limit further analysis.