[Babase] 0.5 sexskin measurements

kfenn kfenn at princeton.edu
Wed May 28 08:43:55 EDT 2008


Karl O. Pinc wrote:
>
> On 05/27/2008 03:06:05 PM, kfenn wrote:
>
>  Therefore we are never in danger of violating the "no
>> swelling size allowed before a cycle's mdate"
>
> It is possible, due to gaps in observation, but not likely.
> For the most part a female is "cycling" forever once they
> reach menarche.   (With some cycles "extended" by pregnancy."
>
Right.  If we have a gap, there might be no prior cycle to which the 
mini-swelling can be assigned so there may be an attempt to assign it to 
the next cycle.  We will have to take these as they come.  There is no 
point to creating lots of complex rules around possible individual 
variation.  It is really best to get an error anyway so Jeanne can take 
a close look at why that female is outside all the current rules.

>  because by our definition of a 'cycle', there is only ever one day 
> falling before an mdate.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean.  The day before an Mdate belongs to
> the prior cycle, unless your either before menarche or after
> a gap but before the first CYCPOINTS row which is a Mdate.
>
My mistake in reading the documentation.  Please ignore.
> What complicates things is that there are at least 2 different
> definitions of a cycle in Babase.  REPSTATS has one, CYCSTATS
> provides details to when REPSTATS says the female is cycling,
> but sexskin measurements occur at any time but are still always
> assigned to a cycle.   The problem comes in (in the broad sense,
> perhaps not precisely -- I've not reviewed REPSTATS) when
> there's a sexskin measurement when REPSTATS says the female
> is not cycling.  So, SEXSKINS has an alternate answer to the
> "what is a cycle?" question.
>
> There are several considerations.  The first is whether the measurement
> records any swelling at all.  Another is how big the swelling is.
> And yet another is whether the measurement has gone down to 0 after
> having gone up to 1 or larger.  And it makes a difference where in the
> cycle these things take place, before the Mdate, after the Mdate but
> before the Tdate, etc.  Different things are allowed or disallowed
> at different times.  For example you're not allowed to go back down to
> 0 after a Tdate but before a Ddate, but you can before the Tdate.
> (At one point there was a requirement that
> the swelling did not decrease until the Ddate was reached.  We don't
> have that particular requirement any longer, but there may be other
> requirements I've forgotten.)
>
The above is very helpful, but it also makes me believe we have really 
split all the hairs we can possible split as long as we are requiring 
the each swelling size to be associated with a cycle and as long as 
swelling size is what /defines/ a cycle.  As I said above, anything 
falling outside these rules really deserves special attention (i.e. 
females like Kathryn).  For the moment, I'm satisfied that I'm not going 
to spend a lot of time on errors for the expected mini-swellings, 
(pre-puberty and some during pregnancy).
>
> When you review note that them meaning of phrases like "greater than 0"
> or "less than 1" have changed now that 0.5 is allowed.
>
10-4 on that, but you will change the documentation once we finalized 
all this, right?


Tabby
> _______________________________________________
> Babase mailing list
> Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu
> http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase

-- 
Tabby Fenn
Research Assistant

Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
401 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544

609 258-6898 (Ph)
609 258-2712 (Fx)



More information about the Babase mailing list