[Babase] MEMBERS Comparison - Final Summary

Catherine Markham babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 30 Sep 2005 13:58:37 -0400


Hi Karl,

I finished with the MEMBERS comparison just a little while ago.  Below 
are a couple questions that came up that I can't quite explain. 
Everything else - by far the majority of discrepancies - made sense 
(yippee!) or I've already emailed you about them.

Thanks,
Catherine



Questions:

1.  Several individuals had only rows in the new MEMBERS table despite 
having no rows in CENSUS.  These individuals include: A21, B11, CS1*, 
D13*, DM1*, MN1*, MT5*, NZ5*, R14, RH9, and UT4*.

All of the ones with asterisks were on my list of conversion errors from 
Leah (corrections have been discussed, but I still need to make the 
changes).  I'm not sure what is up with the others, though - I'll have 
to look into them more carefully.  What the program is doing in all 
cases is giving a single row for the baboon's birth in MEMBERS, despite 
there being no data in CENSUS.  The only exception is A21 because this 
is the only individual in the list who also has a death date - in this 
case, there are rows from birth through death in MEMBERS, again without 
any info in CENSUS.  All of this seems logical, even if it is a bit 
weird to have MEMBERS entries when nothing is listed in CENSUS.  Karl, 
am I working through this one right?

2.  Lots of "glitches" arising from the partially loaded Wn0303b file 
showed up as rows in MEMBERS not matching CENSUS.  I flagged these to go 
back and recheck after that census file for Weaver's on 5 March 2003 can 
be uploaded completely.

3.  The last few records in the comparison txt file you sent me start 
out for ZUM - the last line itself is nothing more than a plus sign.  Is 
this the correct end?  No real errors to look at for ZUM?



Common discrepancies:

1.  The most common discrepancies had to do with interpolation around a 
baboon's death due to changes in the interpolations rules.

2.  Another common discrepancy had to do with the fact that no days 
placing a baboon in Group 9 were reflected in the comparison.  These 
were not true differences in the tables, but required checking the new 
MEMBERS to be certain the rows did in fact exist.

3.  The mistake with many of TIT's rows in CENSUS where status had been 
"L" and is now changed to "N" (to match TIT's rows in MEMBERS).


How I did it (just for archive):

For each baboon with an error (whether it involved a plus or minus or 
both), I looked up the baboon's sname in BIOGRAPH and checked to see if 
the dates around the discrepancy had to do with birth, death, or 
neither.  Most of the problems around the birth date dealt with animals 
born into Group 9 (their first 14 days post-birth showed up with a minus 
sign since Group 9 rows in the new table were ignored in the 
comparison).  For these, I checked the new MEMBERS table to make sure 
that the expected rows were indeed present.

For the deaths, I checked the old CENSUS table for the last confirmed 
presence and first confirmed absence (and flagged records where first 
confirmed absence was not entered - still need to correct these).  I 
then calculated what the interpolation should be by hand and checked the 
new MEMBERS table to make sure it matched correctly.

For neither, these were mostly just cases where I needed to verify that 
placement the animal was actually in Group 9 in the new MEMBERS table. 
There were just a couple cases where running reinterp on the old MEMBERS 
table sorted out any discrepancies.