Shape family · 3 formations · 1992–1994 · widest pair 6 bits apart
A family of 3 diagrams 00a32ab099
Every drawing here lies within 4 bits of another one in the group. It says the drawings look alike; it says nothing about the fields.
shape hash: a hash of the ink alone, cropped to its own bounds: a fingerprint of the design, matched in every orientation · show this family in the grid.
These are similarities between drawings, not between crop formations. Three sites drew them, to three conventions: cropcirclecenter.com redraws every formation in one editor's house style at one size, and the other two publish scans and photographs of many hands. Two diagrams that hash together may be one design published twice, one editor's habit, or the same drawing reused — the archive cannot tell you which, and a family here is never evidence that two formations are related.
The biggest families are the simplest designs. Two circles, three circles in a triangle, a ring inside a ring: a plain design has few ways of being drawn and every editor draws it much the same, so it gathers a large family. Size here measures how ordinary a shape is, not how surprising the repeat is — a family of two rare designs is the more interesting find, and it sits at the bottom of the list.
The shape numbers are experimental. M3-6b graded the element count right to within one on 97.5 % of a hand-labelled sample and the rotational order right on 88.8 % against a gate of 90 %, which the extractor did not meet; the ring count agrees with a reader on 35.9 % and is not calibrated at all. Read any number here beside the picture, not instead of it.
The diagrams
Member by member
| formation | date | place | county | crop | site | elements | rings | rotational | mirror | stored size |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wickenby Wood UK19920707_C | 7 July 1992 | Wickenby Wood | Lincolnshire | cc | 1 | 0 | 2-fold | 1.00 | 575×415 | |
| West Stowell UK19920803_E | 3 August 1992 | West Stowell | Wiltshire | cc | 3 | 0 | none found | 0.98 | 575×415 | |
| Huish UK19940618_A | 18 June 1994 | Huish | Wiltshire | ice | cc | 1 | 0 | none found | 0.96 | 575×415 |
The element count is right to within one on 97.5 % of a 161-diagram hand-labelled sample; the rotational order right on 88.8 % of a 197-diagram hand-labelled sample, against a gate of 90 %; the ring count agrees with a reader on 35.9 % — it is not a calibrated number.