While whipping up some numbers for a fun contest Aaron over at Custora is running against his own Pebble data, I noticed something tonight is very familiar to my eyes.

Let me be frank and say I’m not a statistician, or a mathematician, or really any other -ician. I’m just a guy who likes visualizing data and loves crowd-sourcing, so I’m probably going to call things funny names because I don’t know what they are called in the math/stat world, so I make up my own. So, any real -icians out there that would please correct my ignorance, I give you free reign!

Ok, back to the fun…

Ahem. So, I noticed something familiar in the trend convergence for Pebble today. See if you can spot it:

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Yes? No? Here, let me help…

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See that little flat-line on the trend line? Yeah, I call that a “stall” on the convergence chart. Not to be confused with a stall in pledges or backers, but for me a “stall” is when the convergence of the trend-line-trend (green) to the pledge-line (blue) stall out and coasts along the rolling trend-line (dashed-green) because the pledge activity begins to hold and maintain the trend. Now, this could be nothing and could just be a quip because I heard Pebble mentioned on a Kickstarter segment on Marketplace today while driving home and I’m sure that gave them a little exposure boost, but it could be much more. Let me explain.

Let me show you what the “stall” shape looks like without the dots and trend-line masking it:

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Now, if this is like the other stalls I’ve seen in recent projects, here’s what I expect to see:

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This could be a huge shift for Pebble, because the two most recent experiences I’ve had with this phenomenon, when they happen in that 1/2~3/4 sweet spot, have landed the one project as the top-most funded project in the Board & Card Games category, and the other is right behind it. When these happen in the 1/2 to 3/4 points in a project – it seems to accelerate the normal spike phenomenon that most projects experience the last few days of the campaign and extends it over a much larger portion of the end of their campaign.

First, this is what the average project looks like in shape (ignore the money involved). This is Double Fine’s project:

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… and here’s the same basic shape on Wollstonecraft, a publication from the Children’s Book category:

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Notice even though both projects started out differently (huge surge with Double Fine, gradual increase with Wollstonecraft), that the convergence shape is very similar even though one ended at 833%, and the other at 2293%, the shape is similar enough to be recognizable. They slowly come together, and have a little upward tail at the end. This is what normally happens with most successful projects (and part of the reason I started working on the model to counter-act this curve, which I talk about here in detail).

Now let me show you what stalls /w acceleration look like. Here’s Zpocalypse, which closed a few days ago:

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Notice the small stall on the 2nd, and the “Felicia Day” stall on the 10th? Yeah… it just accelerated the normal end-of-campaign spike over a lot longer duration.

Next up, Zombicide:

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Zombicide is an active project, but the upswing the last few days is almost scary. See that long stall that starts on the 14th and coasts until about the 20th? Once they started adding stretch goals after 50k, and required the $100 level to get them, they’re pledges per backer skyrocketed – which is continuing to shoot their pledge levels and backer counts to the moon. They continue to add another ~10 backers a day, every day as they continue to add more and more over-funding goals:

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Now, again, this could be nothing with Pebble, and by the end of tomorrow I’m guessing I’ll have a better idea where it’s going. But, if I’m right, I’ll just enjoy a hearty “I told you so”, and keep my watch out for the next project that “stalls”, and so can you.

Enjoy!