[Babase] BaBase Members Table - 2 Questions

Catherine Markham babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 09:35:43 -0500


Hi all,

I have two general question about the Members table:

First, in doing some queries earlier this week, I noticed that there 
were many cases where the origin was "I" and interp = 0.  This seemed a 
funny to me at first - I read it as indicating the record was 
interpolated but the number of days interpolated was zero.  After 
looking into it a bit more, I see that these are records for the birth 
or death date of an individual.  So that made a bit more sense - if a 
census didn't happen to fall on the estimated date of birth/death, we 
would generally want some way of getting that info into members.

But what about the birth estimates where the bstatus is greater than 0?  
Should that estimated birth date go into the members table?  As an 
example, Arsenal's birth date is estimated to be 14 Aug 1996 with a 
bstatus of 1 (accuracy for birth estimate within 1 year) and a matgrp of 
9.0.  Arsenal was first observed in the field in Viola's group on 7 Feb 
2004.  So the members table for Arsenal has interpolated dates for 14 
days forward from birth (14 Aug 1996 through 28 Aug 1996) in his matgrp 
(group 9.0), and then regular census/interpolation in Viola's group 
begins on 7 Feb 2004. 

My second question deals with six records in Members table where there 
the date field is blank.  Since the origin is "I" and interp = 0 for 
these records as well, I thought perhaps they were cases in Biograph 
where the birth or death date was blank.  But no luck - all of these 
guys have birth dates entered and none have died.  Does anyone know how 
these records got pulled into the Members table?  There are no blank 
dates in the Census table.  The six individuals are KRA, TAP, ORN, AMO, 
ISR, and APO.

Sorry if you all have been through these before or if I'm missing 
something obvious!

Catherine