Calgary's Halloween hot spots: Map plots busiest trick-or-treating districts

Want to pinpoint the mostsugar-rewarding parts of Calgary for trick-or-treating, or figure out how much candy you should have on hand tonight?

ACanadian software developer analysed census data toshowwhich neighbourhoods have the highest ratio of dwellings to children of trick-or-treating age.

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In Calgary, some inner city districts like Mount Royal andRideauPark,LakeviewandAltadoreshould see heavy traffic.

Butno surprisethe heaviest concentrations of young goblins are out in the newer suburbs in all four quadrants:

• Signal Hill and Aspen Woods in the west.
• AbourLake and theHamptonsin the northwest, over to Hidden Valley andPanorama Hills up north.
• Several districts in the northeast,such asMartindaleandCastleridge.
• And many of the new communities south of Fish Creek Park on either side ofDeerfootTrail,such as Cranston and Auburn Bay.

Browse the spooky data for Calgary here.

Those areas have among thehighest ratios of individual dwellings towhat Statistics Canada defines as children of "prime trick-or-treating age," according to a Canada-widemap created by Jens von Bergmann, a42-year-old software developer from Vancouver with a Ph.D. in mathematics.

"I think just the general idea of which areas will see more foot traffic, which will see less I think that's useful information for people," said von Bergmann, who co-created the map with his colleague Alejandro Cervantes.

Statistics Canada defines "prime trick-or-treating age" as between five and 14 years old.

Von Bergmann decided to take theirdata and divideit by the number of private dwellings in a census tract, and then colour-codethat resulting ratioon the map with darker areas representing denser neighbourhoods.

Census data from 2011

The most recent census data von Bergmann had access to was from 2011, but he says that shouldn't matter much.

"The age distribution overall doesn't change that much over the course of four years," he said."Birth rates are pretty constant."

Von Bergmanncallsthe trick-or-treating map"more or less agimmick" and sayshe's used census data for more serious endeavours like creating data-driven maps that delve intoissueslike housing prices and commuting costs.

He acknowledges, though, that they're not as popular as his Halloween map.

"They've seen, comparatively, much less interest," he says."But I guess that's the nature of things."

That said, there's one variable von Bergmann's map doesn't account for the fact that some neighbourhoods see more foot traffic Halloween night because there are economic incentives to travel there.