Topic: Most Unique Routes by Season

[clemsonbeav]

I decided to compare the 25 US seasons (taking out TAR8 and not counting the upcoming 27th season) and find out how unique their routes were statistically.  How I decided to compute this was to take the stats on Wikipedia as to how many *seasons* (not pitstops) had filmed in each country.  For instance, I took the route from TAR1, then saw how many seasons had visited each of the countries that TAR1 visited (discounting the USA in this and all seasons).  For instance, South Africa got a 3, Zambia got a 1, France got 8, Tunisia got 1, Italy got 7, India got 10, Thailand got 6, and China got 11.  The resultant average was 5.875, which is high comparatively.  As you can see, TAR1 also has two unique countries to that season.  So, below, you'll see the seasons ranked by route uniqueness (where a lower score is more unique), as well as by number of unique countries.

Disadvantages to this method: As in the case of TAR1, South Africa was only a 'get out of the airport and hop in another airplane to another country'; however, this country was still counted.  Additionally, territories like French Polynesia got grouped with France, Guam with US, etc., in the style of Wikipedia.

So, this method is not perfect, and is just one way of looking at things.

Seasons by uniqueness (Season - Score)
5 - 3.363636364
15 - 3.375
19 - 3.444444444
25 - 3.5
23 - 3.75
10 - 3.833333333
7 - 3.888888889
12 - 3.888888889
11 - 4
6 - 4.1
17 - 4.111111111
3 - 4.272727273
13 - 4.428571429
22 - 4.5
2 - 4.857142857
26 - 5
9 - 5.111111111
21 - 5.25
20 - 5.333333333
24 - 5.714285714
4 - 5.75
16 - 5.75
1 - 5.875
18 - 5.875
14 - 6.625

Season by number of unique countries
Six unique countries: 10
Four: 5, 6, 12
Three: 19
Two: 1, 11, 15, 20
One: 3, 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26
Zero : 2, 4, 21, 22, 23, 24

[Declive]

That is actually very cool!

[clemsonbeav]

One interesting thing that I've just noticed: Season 23 visited no unique countries, and Season 10 visited six (the highest number); however, Season 23 actually ranked higher on the uniqueness scale according to my method.  While Season 10 visited a high number of unique countries, it also visited some countries with a high score (most notably India, China, and France).  Japan (with 7 seasons visited) and Austria (with 5 seasons visited) were the 'worst' on 23's record.

Another interesting thing: This ranking is subject to change, as visiting a country affects the score for all seasons that visited that country.  For an extreme example, were another country to copy Season 5's route, Season 5 would drop from most unique to midways down.

[Maanca]

7 was the most unique route, in that it was the only non-Family Edition route not to completely circumnavigate the world. It went as far east as India then reversed direction.

[G.B.]

In terms of just personal opinion, seven was the most unique, while ten was the most 'enjoyably unique'.

[Maanca]

Also, even though it wasn't worth including, lol, 8 actually did have 1 unique country: The race has never returned to Costa Rica.

Supposedly Belize was to be visited, too, but was cancelled due to a hurricane. So that would have been 2.

[Keepcopz]

10 was the season that featured most unique countries, yeah. But I think it the quality of the season is really depended on the variety of countries they visited too, like, 22 visited NO unique countries at all but its location feel a lot more 'fresher' than the location featured in 10. IMO

[naejae91]

TAR10 was one of the most unique route with all the unexpected new countries and visiting almost every part of Asia (East Asia, Central Asia if y'all consider Mongolia as Central Asia, South-East Asia, South Asia, West Asia a.k.a. Middle East), and furthermore this is the first ever season to feature westward circumnavigate route with featuring early chaotic Asia leg. Before TAR10, the earliest Asia leg we can get was TAR2 leg 5 in Thailand.