To truly understand streaks, you’ll need to understand maps, so that’s where we’ll start. These maps won’t help you navigate the globe, but they will help you navigate streaks like you’re the Magellan of Rock! We’ve already mentioned that streaks are used to find engagement patterns. Maps are what Rock uses to collect and analyze the data needed to find those patterns. There are three kinds of maps: Occurrence: The occurrence map defines when it’s possible to participate in something. This gives a framework for deciding if an individual has been participating regularly or not. After all, how can you tell if someone missed a meeting if you don’t know there was a meeting scheduled?Engagement: The engagement map tells you when an individual has or has not participated in something. In effect, you can think of it as a person’s attendance. However, it’s important to know that the engagement map isn’t just a fancy new name for attendance. The two share many characteristics but are not the same.Exclusion: In school you may have been introduced to the concept of ‘excused’ versus ‘unexcused’ absences. An excused absence is acceptable, but an unexcused absence might have negative consequences. The exclusion map is for tracking excused absences. Exclusions don’t prevent a streak from being positively affected by an attendance, but absences are ignored and don’t cause streaks to be broken. Exclusions can be provided for an individual or a location. Exclusions on locations can be used for events like snow days or other circumstances that might close a campus. All three of these maps are used to calculate streaks. For example, let’s say you want to calculate someone’s streak in a recurring weekly meeting. You would need to know when meetings were held (occurrence map), which meetings someone attended (engagement map) and whether missed meetings should be forgiven (exclusion map).