BARFSTEW = THE BARF OF IT ALL: The `Mapping' Of Over 3,000 Bigfoot Reports

Take one PHD candidate at Penn State - provide 3,313 pieces of information to be plotted (the report physical locations on a map) - cross reference with the population map of America..... and cook up some hypothesis to probe:

First the map, which of course blows up via the direct Link Here

Now, as you can see on his first map he has the label `Bigfoot or Bigpopulation'? Which color codes the mapping according to the grid shown:

Now, to understand this coloring he points out the inverse relationship between Bigfoot perceptions and Population - in other words - Bigfoot is found BIG in areas of FEW people (like where the Bigfoot hunters go?) - as seen in the map below: OH, BTW, the PHD guy didn't venture why sightings were lower in populated areas - thinking instead that IF it is real it is `thriving in the west'. Why aren't those hunters looking in their backyard, right?

Bivariate map of sightings and population.

http://www.joshuastevens.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/bf_bivariate.png

That said, the researcher says almost the same thing with "The desire to find, or think you saw, bigfoot might be especially high if you’ve heard tales of giant, ape-like creatures calling the place you’re in home. A combination of environment and legend likely combine to at least put wary outdoorsmen on the lookout."

Perhaps even more interesting are the 88 comments - a few of which are shared below:

Ray says:

September 18, 2013 at 12:05 pm

Bigfoot is a paranormal entity as many of the unpublished sightings attest to. The mainstream Cryptozoologists desperately want this to be a physical being and discard the odder encounters. This thing exists and hundreds of thousands of multiple witness testimony begs. Even the native americans know that it is a spirit. You cannot place the paranormal into a test tube. Tracks that end in the middle of a muddy field, physic backlashes unpn encounters, associations with ufo’s .(Which) I do not believe are ET but is an earth based phenomenon as well as many other strange attributes. The ancedotal evidence is everywhere and much to be believed as many encounters were sckeptics

Jim says:

September 18, 2013 at 1:53 pm

Hi John,

This isn’t a matter of “believers” (as Muh, not you, employed the term), but of facts that are admittedly counter-intuitive. It does seem as if we should have more, better imagery. I disagree with you that we have none — see M.K. Davis’s work on the P/G film for just one example most people don’t know as much about as they think they do — but for sure there anyone interested in this subject wishes there were more volume and more quality.

Here’s the thing, though. Right now, take out your smartphone and videotape the nearest person. Right now, go. How long did it take you to turn on the phone, open the app, and press record? The process is a lot faster than the wet glass plates Matthew Brady had to deal with, certainly. But most alleged Sasquatch sightings are over in about a second.

There is a very instructive parallel, though it does predate the personal mobile/digital era. We all know that in the 1980s and 1990s, drug-related drive-by shootings in the LA area were real. No one disputes that. Yet only one was ever caught on video, by a news crew that was coincidentally already filming something else.

“We’d have had a photo by now” feels as if it ought to make sense. But the reality of capturing images just doesn’t work that way. The fact that we do have *some* images, with a quality that reflects haste, is actually not inconsistent with the prospect that the animal is real. Does any of that add up to proof? No. There is no proof. But it’s not a disproof either.

THE BS Entertains

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