2012 Quarter Peal analysis

Every year The Clapper prints hundreds of Quarter Peal reports from towers all over North America (and occasionally beyond). If we stop to think about it, what else is this but a natural dataset, ripe for analysis? And perhaps from it we might be able to get something of a snapshot picture of the state of North American ringing today.

Don Morrison’s article “...and Statistics”, which appeared in the July 2008 issue of The Clapper, set out to do just that with the 2007 QPs (along with a look back at 1987 and 1997); headline summary figures for 2008 and 2009 were similarly compiled by Scott Stricker (the Clapper editor at the time) and printed in the Annual Report for those years. Since then, however, there has been a hiatus; this article is an attempt to set the ball rolling again.

In April of 2012 I began to assist the present Clapper editor by assembling each months’ QP reports for her. My job has been made easier by the new performance submission system, put in place by John Danaher and Don Morrison in conjunction with the relaunch of the NAG website. In addition to allowing the immediate posting of performances online there, this system has also set up a searchable database behind the scenes, with all the ensuing advantages for data analysis.

I have accordingly been able to compile quite a thorough look at the 2012 QP statistics, broken down along various axes. For 2010–2011, however, with no complete database to draw on, I have contented myself with a few basic figures, tallied from the relevant issues of The Clapper.

I hope that the attached article will prove interesting to a wide range of ringers. I would of course welcome any questions, comments, or further contributions on the subject.