nomiShape (version 1.0.1)

ufo: UFO Sightings: Nominal distribution of reported UFO shapes

Description

A large real-world dataset of UFO sighting reports collected by the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), a non-profit organization dedicated to the collection and dissemination of objective UFO data.

Usage

ufo

Format

A data frame with 63,561 rows and 8 variables:

date_sighted

Character. Date of the UFO sighting (YYYY-MM-DD).

latitude

Numeric. Latitude of the sighting location.

longitude

Numeric. Longitude of the sighting location.

city

Character. City where the sighting occurred.

state

Character. State or region of the sighting.

shape

Character. Reported shape of the UFO (nominal variable of interest).

duration_sec

Numeric. Duration of the sighting in seconds.

comments

Character. Free-text comments describing the sighting.

Details

The dataset contains over 63,000 reported sightings spanning several decades and includes information on sighting date, geographic location, duration, narrative comments, and—most importantly for nomiShape— the reported shape of the observed object.

The shape variable is a nominal variable with many categories (e.g., "light", "circle", "triangle", "sphere"), exhibiting strong dominance by a few common shapes followed by a gradual decline across rarer categories. Despite the presence of a highly frequent leading category ("light"), the overall frequency structure is better described as triangular or normal-like rather than strictly exponential or Pareto.

This dataset is included as a realistic, large-sample example for exploring dominance, modality, and shape classification of nominal distributions using visual and information-theoretic tools.

Examples

ufo

# Centered bar plot highlighting dominance and symmetry
centered_barplot(ufo, "shape")

# Centered dot plot with connections and shading
centered_dotplot(ufo, "shape", connect = TRUE, shade = TRUE)

# Shape comparison plot
shape_comp_plot(ufo, "shape")

# AIC-based shape classification
shape_aic(ufo, "shape")