17 Years of Tangomarathons.com

You may know that I have been running TMD for 17 years now, and every now and then I look at the data, and try to make some sense of what I see.

What started as a 1.5h exercise with the TMD data, VS Code and Github Copilot, is evolving still. I am learning how to be fast and how to let the AI do more than I ask for, but not produce too many bold statements — but some, and quite entertaining. Crazy.

Some screenshots – but please look at the whole thing. The full article can be found here: https://www.tangomarathons.com/media/2026/01/2026-anniversary-17years-1.html

Thanks to everyone for commenting and providing insights into your needs, thinking, and critique.

Thus, some additions. — still not done, not finished, not perfect. I think it’s still fun to read.

1. More data cleaning (city names, event names)

2. Backfilling events that must have happened but were never entered into the TMD database (like, when there is a 12th and 15th edition, the rest of the events are extrapolated and added as “phantom” events).

3. exploration of flight prices and destinations

4. I still lack more Encuentro data (hard to come by, seems like encuentro organizers love facebook groups much more than events/websites), and festivals (tangofestivals.net died a few years back, and someone re-started it without the old data)

5. The last thirds or so — if not more — is where the AI took my request to start interpreting the data seriously and goes into scenario building and estimations. It still doesn’t understand many things and makes aprons based on old data. I think i will need to split this up and prepare the context better.