[Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase
Jeanne Altmann
altj at Princeton.EDU
Mon Mar 22 11:00:53 EDT 2010
Excellent, thanks Lacey
jeanne
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Lacey
Maryott Roerish
Sent: Monday, March 22, 2010 10:59 AM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase
I did some checking this morning and there don't seem to be glaring
errors between maturedates and rankdates tables. No maturedates occur
after rankdates(which was to be expected given babase contraints, but I
just wanted to check). All of the matdates falling in the middle of a
month are equal to their rankdates counterpart, or occur in different
years, which would would expect to see with the 'On' ranked dates.
I am going to go ahead and roll all maturedates back to the first, and
then all rankdates. From there we can pick at larger errors like
rankdates and ranktypes not matching up. This at least standardizes this
part of it!
Cheers
Lacey
On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 10:03 AM, Susan Alberts <alberts at duke.edu>
wrote:
Most maturedates that don't fall on the first of the month are 'by'
dates but a number are 'on' dates from earlier decades. These used to be
done with dates other than the first of the month -- there is nothing
wrong with them, but they can be changed.
For rankdates, indeed most "on" dates are first of the month, but a few
are not. There were some instances where we actually saw the day on
which rank was attained, and entered those dates. All are from earlier
decades and all can be changed.
Susan
On Mar 19, 2010, at 4:22 PM, Jeanne Altmann wrote:
Ah, yes. I assume all of these are 'by' dates. If not. Something more
is wrong. Thanks for the update on progress.
jeanne
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Lacey
Maryott Roerish
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 4:15 PM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase
Susan, Jeanne, Niki and Karl
I am running into some problems with changing the rankdates to the
first of the month. There is a rule that the matured date has to be
less than or equal to rank date (With good reason). However, all of the
maturedates that also occur mid-month are throwing an error. So, it
looks as though I will have to roll those back as well. Will pick at
this and try to fix all of the maturedates before rolling the rankdates
back.
I spoke with Karl about this and there is a work-around that could
fix the majority while skipping the ones that violate this rule, but it
kind of seems like if I am going to be elbow deep in the data anyway, I
should just fix the whole problem at once. Does this fit with how
princeton feels about the timeline of this project? I expect I can have
it all fixed my mid-morning monday, I just want to do some
cross-checking of maturedates and rankdates and make sure there aren't
any glaring errors before i change a whole bunch of data in 2 tables.
Let me know
Lacey
On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 3:25 PM, Jeanne Altmann <altj at princeton.edu>
wrote:
-----Original Message-----
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Karl O.
Pinc
Sent: Friday, March 19, 2010 3:15 PM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] Rankdate Changes in Babase
On 03/19/2010 01:48:28 PM, Lacey Maryott Roerish wrote:
> Susan, (et al)
>
> Jeanne, Karl, Niki and I just finished discussing how to handle
> some
> recent issues discovered in babase related to Rankdates. It can be
> difficult to extract number of males on a given date if some males
> rankdates
> occur in the middle of the month. For this reason, I will be
> changing all
> rankdates (Both BY and ON) to the beginning on the month using a
> function
> Karl had previously developed. This will simply make querying
> easier,
> and
> will also sync up rankdates data with actual rank data, which are all
> recorded on the 1st of the month.
We will also then put a rule in requiring that rankdates.rnkdate be
on the first of the month. (Once Lacey let's me know she's done
changing the data.)
The problem has been that nobody ever uses the rnkdate() function,
which sets a date to the first of the month, when comparing
ranks.rnkdate with rankdates.ranked. They'll still have to use this
function when doing arbitrary date comparisons against either
ranks.rnkdate or, now, rankdates.ranked so we're not really
making the problem go away, but are pushing it farther to the
fringes. In any case the ranks.rnkdate/rankdate.ranked problem
has been discussed every few years so it's clear there's a
problem there that this change will make go away.
Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
Agreed; it will remain a potentially valuable function that we need to
remember the situations you note. However, with the proposed change, we
will have the ranked-by date regularized, which is good, and we will
make moot the most common use for the function. Thanks Karl for the
patient reminder about the function and all for brainstorming on the
various issues.
jeanne
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--
- -
Lacey K. Maryott Roerish
Alberts Lab
Department of Biology
Duke University
ph: 919-660-7306
fax: 919-660-7293
Lacey.Maryott at duke.edu
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--------------------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Dept of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham NC
27708, 919-660-7272 (Ph), 919-660-7293 (Fax)
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--
- -
Lacey K. Maryott Roerish
Alberts Lab
Department of Biology
Duke University
ph: 919-660-7306
fax: 919-660-7293
Lacey.Maryott at duke.edu
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