[Babase] Re: Bstatus Zero vs. Blank
Susan Alberts
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Thu, 14 Apr 2005 17:49:13 -0500
I've forwarded this to the babase mailing list.
Thanks Catherine for this effort.
My responses to JA are below.
>To avoid duplications of effort, a quick report:
>
>I went through the list Catherine prepared. Three quarters are
>blanks, the rest zeros. Zeros are scattered among groups and are
>clustered primarily in the years 1994-1998.
>
>Catherine will go through to mark places where non-zeros will
>probably be needed:
>Animals in groups at onset of observations (estimates will depend on
>age for immatures)
>Animals born into Altos groups 1990-1996 (could be 1mo gap?)
>Animals born into groups when more than a week gap in observation:
> Dec & Jan for most years 1971-2000 approximately (these will
>be 10-15da gaps)
> She will flip through census sheets looking for any other
>gaps greater than a week.
This sounds good.
>
>Note that we currently have nothing between 'within a few days' and
>'within a year'.
>
>Do we want to add other categories (i.e. between 0 and 1) ?
You've asked Catherine to differentiate exact (within a few days)
from within a month or 2 weeks, and this suggests that you would use
this information. is this correct? If so then we definitely want to
add other categories.
>Karl, can we readily add an earliest and latest date as discussed for cycles?
>
>Within a year means +_ 1yr, i.e. a 2yr gap, right? This has come up
>in terms of male age estimates. Where are we on that? How does
>that affect this. Do we want to add other categories?
In the babase documentation, what's written is simply "to within one
year" "to within two years" etc with no more specification. So I
don't know how this was envisioned originally when the documentation
was written. What is written in the monitoring guide and in the male
age estimation protocol is that "to within one year" means "six
months on either side of the estimate". However, when I went to the
field last year and talked to them about this, it turned out that
they were not doing this. Question is, how long have they been not
doing it. I will find out when I go. To me, "within one year"
shouldn't imply a two-year span, but it is vague.
Susan
>
>jeanne
>
>
>At 02:56 PM 4/14/2005, Catherine Markham wrote:
>>Hi all,
>>
>>The attached spreadsheet is follow-up to Susan's request to look at
>>the pattern of zeros vs. blanks in the bstatus column of Biograph.
>>It contains all the rows in Biograph where bstatus was less than 1
>>(total number of records = 1008). In addition to some basic data
>>columns like birth, pid, sname, matgrp, etc., I've added a column
>>called "bstatus zero or blank." If the bstatus appears as a "0" in
>>Biograph, the value here reads "zero" (number of records = 270).
>>If the bstatus is simply blank in Biograph, the value here is
>>"blank" (number of records = 738).
>>
>>Does this help?
>>Thanks,
>>Catherine
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Susan Alberts, Associate Professor
Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC 27708
phone 919-660-7272 fax 919-660-7293