[Babase] Re: OCH in cycgaps

kfenn kfenn at princeton.edu
Wed Nov 12 10:30:49 EST 2008


I can't guarantee this is the complete answer because I haven't worked 
on this recently

Lacey Maryott wrote:
> Hey Tabby,
>
>    Susan just brought to my attention that OCH has an entry in cycgaps 
> for 1989 but her birthdate isn't until 1990.  Is there any way to 
> trace what happened?
I checked my fake cycgaps and undo fake cycgaps just to see if this 
happened to be a gap we had to introduce to fix some quirky error and 
forgot to undo it.  It's not in there, although my files might be a 
little old.  I'm not sure they are the absolute final version we 
uploaded to Babase 2.0.  But I'm pretty sure the fake gaps are a red 
herring anyway.

The gap exists in real cycgaps which is a table that Karl is responsible 
for generating...I have only made some sporatic additions to correct 
errors.  I don't know all the details of why it is there, but it follows 
a pattern with all adult females at that time.  All seem to have gap 
entries on 1989-12-31 with code 'E'.  This indicates observation ended 
(the default condition of gaps is for the female to be under 
observation).  It's probably a manipulation Karl had to do in order to 
upload for the conversion.  The  consistency and quality of the data 
improved around that time, or maybe the records up to that point were 
proofed and cycles and gaps had been reconciled...?  I'm not totally 
sure of the reasoning, but its probably in the documentation.

I'll copy this to the listserve just to get Karls'  2 cents as well...


Tabby

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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