Posted On: July 11, 2023

I analyzed the comments (free text fields) that captured the witness accounts in the NUFORC database of over 80,000 sightings.

The structured data was more or less insignificant and I found no real signal there. The free text field however, provide some interesting results.

I first looked at what the distribution of colors mentioned in the comments. The colors mentioned most frequently in the comments are, in order:.

Orange: 8,917 mentions.

White: 8,131 mentions.

Red: 7,917 mentions.

Green: 3,709 mentions.

Blue: 3,391 mentions.

Black: 1,895 mentions.

Yellow: 1,597 mentions.

Silver: 1,416 mentions.

Grey: 298 mentions.

Gold: 286 mentions.

Pink: 170 mentions.

Purple: 152 mentions.

This analysis suggests that orange, white, and red are the most frequently observed colors in the reported UFO sightings, according to the comments in the dataset.

Please note that this analysis is based on a simple keyword search in the comments, and it assumes that when a color word is used, it's used to describe the color of the UFO.

If a comment said something like "The sky was blue", this would also be counted, even though the color is not describing the UFO.

Then to account for noise in the data I also looked at the words most associated with the word Orange. Now the results were messy as I expected but also yielded the results I wanted.

The ten most common words associated with Orange in the comments are:.

Orange: 8,917 mentions.

44: 4,980 mentions.

Lights: 2,599 mentions.

Sky: 2,339 mentions.

Light: 1,980 mentions.

Bright: 1,849 mentions.

Moving: 1,342 mentions.

Red: 1,341 mentions.

Object: 1,064 mentions.

Glowing: 807 mentions.

You can see the data is clearly messy, for example 44 occurred 4980 times.

That is purely a data capture issue and holds no significance.

But what I wanted to see is if the colors White or Red also got used in the same context as Orange.

We can see that Red does get associated with Orange 1341 times or around 15% of the time if you like.

Then I looked at the distribution of craft shapes where the word Orange was mentioned.

The most common shapes associated with "Orange" in the comments are:.

Light: 1,891 mentions.

Fireball: 1,621 mentions.

Circle: 1,274 mentions.

Sphere: 1,034 mentions.

Triangle: 466 mentions.

Why did I spend time compiling this and doing this analysis?.

About four weeks ago I posed on the UFOs sub about a sighting I had with my dad with an Orange ball of light as a kid.

It was witnessed by thousands of people.

The moment I posted the post got downvoted. Another Reddit user commented on the post asking detailed questions and got downvoted immediately.

As someone who never really believed in the phenom the behaviour on that post seemed weird and unorganic.

In fact, I did not even claim that it was a UFO I saw, I asked how similar what we saw was to other sightings.

The reaction to the post was strange to say the least. I deleted the post, but I realised I needed to do some more digging.

It is almost like someone did not want that post to trend or get any eyes on it even though it was many years ago.

Now looking at the data and the weird reaction to my post I think that maybe this holds the key to some of the puzzle. Maybe not?. Make of it what you will.

I hope you found it interesting at least.

Post from user KeepItReal911 at at reddit.

Posted On: July 11, 2023

I analyzed the comments (free text fields) that captured the witness accounts in the NUFORC database of over 80,000 sightings.

The structured data was more or less insignificant and I found no real signal there. The free text field however, provide some interesting results.

I first looked at what the distribution of colors mentioned in the comments. The colors mentioned most frequently in the comments are, in order:.

Orange: 8,917 mentions.

White: 8,131 mentions.

Red: 7,917 mentions.

Green: 3,709 mentions.

Blue: 3,391 mentions.

Black: 1,895 mentions.

Yellow: 1,597 mentions.

Silver: 1,416 mentions.

Grey: 298 mentions.

Gold: 286 mentions.

Pink: 170 mentions.

Purple: 152 mentions.

This analysis suggests that orange, white, and red are the most frequently observed colors in the reported UFO sightings, according to the comments in the dataset.

Please note that this analysis is based on a simple keyword search in the comments, and it assumes that when a color word is used, it's used to describe the color of the UFO.

If a comment said something like "The sky was blue", this would also be counted, even though the color is not describing the UFO.

Then to account for noise in the data I also looked at the words most associated with the word Orange. Now the results were messy as I expected but also yielded the results I wanted.

The ten most common words associated with Orange in the comments are:.

Orange: 8,917 mentions.

44: 4,980 mentions.

Lights: 2,599 mentions.

Sky: 2,339 mentions.

Light: 1,980 mentions.

Bright: 1,849 mentions.

Moving: 1,342 mentions.

Red: 1,341 mentions.

Object: 1,064 mentions.

Glowing: 807 mentions.

You can see the data is clearly messy, for example 44 occurred 4980 times.

That is purely a data capture issue and holds no significance.

But what I wanted to see is if the colors White or Red also got used in the same context as Orange.

We can see that Red does get associated with Orange 1341 times or around 15% of the time if you like.

Then I looked at the distribution of craft shapes where the word Orange was mentioned.

The most common shapes associated with "Orange" in the comments are:.

Light: 1,891 mentions.

Fireball: 1,621 mentions.

Circle: 1,274 mentions.

Sphere: 1,034 mentions.

Triangle: 466 mentions.

Why did I spend time compiling this and doing this analysis?.

About four weeks ago I posed on the UFOs sub about a sighting I had with my dad with an Orange ball of light as a kid.

It was witnessed by thousands of people.

The moment I posted the post got downvoted. Another Reddit user commented on the post asking detailed questions and got downvoted immediately.

As someone who never really believed in the phenom the behaviour on that post seemed weird and unorganic.

In fact, I did not even claim that it was a UFO I saw, I asked how similar what we saw was to other sightings.

The reaction to the post was strange to say the least. I deleted the post, but I realised I needed to do some more digging.

It is almost like someone did not want that post to trend or get any eyes on it even though it was many years ago.

Now looking at the data and the weird reaction to my post I think that maybe this holds the key to some of the puzzle. Maybe not?. Make of it what you will.

I hope you found it interesting at least.

Post from user KeepItReal911 at at reddit.