[Babase] new sexskin error_death while ppa
kfenn
kfenn at princeton.edu
Wed May 14 15:57:21 EDT 2008
Karl O. Pinc wrote:
> Death during ppa means that there is no sexual cycle after the
> conception cycle. Our new rule says that any sexkins
> measurements after birth belong to the next cycle. When there is
> no next cycle then there's just no cycle, so the sexskins
> measurements can't go in.
>
> How about this? We change the rule about assignment to a sexual
> cycle for sexskins so that any sexskins measurements > 0 on or
> after birth belong to the next cycle, but if it's a 0 measurement
> then it belongs to the conception cycle.
>
> This might do odd things if for some reason your looking at
> lengths of cycles by looking at sexskins dates. Better
> check with Jeanne (at least) to see if this is a good idea.
> (I don't have a better one at the moment. Maybe somebody
> else does?) It does not sound like a bad idea, but...
>
/ /I don't really feel good about that but it's up to Jeanne. She is
the cycle guru. To me, Cycling is cycling. Pregnancy is pregnancy.
Ppa is Ppa. It doesn't seem like we should lump ppa into cycling. I
think Laurence had gripes about how that turns out in REPSTATS and
CYCSTATS when the 'cycles' go on forever. But I don't know those tables
well enough.
Is it possible to set a condition that says a sexskin row doesn't have
to be associated with a row in CYCLES if it falls after a birth and is
0....or does it violate basic relational database rules to have data in
a table that doesn't actually relate to anything?
> I suppose we could not record the observations.
> I guess that depends on the field protocols and when they
> write down a 0 and when they don't bother.
>
As far as I can tell, they always record a sexskin value for every
female on every census day...unless they can't find the female.
> I also wonder what was done during the conversion. Did we
> throw out data in a data-cleanup fit? (pause) No. We
> didn't have the pregnancy test in the sexual cycle assignment
> code so all ppa sexskin measurements were assigned to the
> conception cycle. Right?
>
Don't know. This is the first time I'm delving into the sexskin tables
at all in Babase 2.0. It's a bigger pickle than I would have thought
for such a small table.
> If we make this change you'll have to do your "update cid=cid"
> thingie again to get all the sexskins re-assigned to
> cycles in a consistent fashion.
>
> Note that because our new rule is sexskin value specific
> I'll have to fiddle with the documentation a bit. It
> describes generic rules based strictly on date, rules
> that don't take into account the measurement value.
>
> Karl <kop at meme.com>
> Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
> -- Robert A. Heinlein
>
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--
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)
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