Hotzones convergence over time

How much flight data do you need to get a good idea of where the hotzones are in an area?

How little is too little and how much is too much?

Processing through vast amounts of data takes considerable time and resources and can be wasteful so calculating the optimal amount of data to get the information you need is important.

If you were to sit and watch a patch of sky for an hour do you think you would have a good idea if that area was busy or not, probably right? If you sit out in the middle of Eastern Washington there wont be a great deal of air traffic, if you sit under the approach end of SeaTac and you'd think it was pretty busy. So one hour does give you reasonably good information. (Of course, it depends on the hour, midnight - not so much), a day and you'd have a great idea (albeit with the same caveat. Christmas day???). Does having 100 hours of information improve the situation? Do we need 1000?

From a common sense standpoint applying more data would would help "tighten" up the hotzones to their true dimensions as you can imagine the shape wiggling and firming as it settles in, converging on it's true form. I wanted to see it happen so I came up with this experiment.

Using the Seattle TAC (terminal area chart) I applied the calculations using just 1 hour of data and gathered the hotzones, then 2 hours, 2,4,5,10,20...1000 hours (at varying times of day). which yields images I have made into an image loop. I have focused in on one area to produce the loop so you can watch a hotzone evolve.

It was a fun experiment and I feel I know more about the stability and reliability of the data from it.