Cubing is growing as a sport

[Spencer131]

There was a Reddit post on r/Cubers where they ask why cubing isn't growing very much. That inspired me to find out how much cubing actually is growing, if at all.

2023 has not finished yet, so those number could increase more.

Here's the SQL queries I used on the wca database:

SELECT YEAR(start_date) AS competition_year, COUNT(*) AS number_of_competitions
FROM Competitions
GROUP BY YEAR(start_date)
ORDER BY competition_year;

SELECT SUBSTRING(wca_id, 1, 4) AS start_year, COUNT(*) AS number_of_persons
FROM Persons
GROUP BY SUBSTRING(wca_id, 1, 4)
ORDER BY start_year;

 

[VincentCuber]

However, this doesn't mean it is growing as a sport. It is just growing. I may be biased though, because I don't think cubing is or should be a sport.

 

[Jennah]

@Spencer131 on a totally unrelated note, how did you learn SQL? Was it with a video, website etc. I think it's important to know the basics so you can collect data such as this. I have been meaning to learn it for awhile.

 

[Spencer131]

@Spencer131 on a totally unrelated note, how did you learn SQL? Was it with a video, website etc. I think it's important to know the basics so you can collect data such as this. I have been meaning to learn it for awhile.

I originally learned SQL just by googling things, but nowadays I use ChatGPT

I told ChatGPT what the table schema was like, and what I wanted to do, then it made that query for me

 

[Mike Hughey]

I would imagine if you can do a query on average competition size (number of competitors), you'll see that's growing as well. (Although I don't know that for sure - there have been a lot of little side competitions lately, which might skew it the other way.)

 

[Spencer131]

I would imagine if you can do a query on average competition size (number of competitors), you'll see that's growing as well. (Although I don't know that for sure - there have been a lot of little side competitions lately, which might skew it the other way.)

Good point, I have added a chart showing number of new competitors each year