[Babase] Interpolation (MEMBERS) changes

Susan Alberts babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Mon, 4 Apr 2005 11:24:02 -0500


I agree with karl that this is a good item for our meeting agenda.

One solution to Catherine's concern would be the following:

1. For natal animals, do what karl is doing now.
2. For males that immigrant into study groups as juvs, subadults or 
adults (so that our birth estimates are within one year at best), 
have his members rows begin with his first appearance.

The reason that we want a row for every day between birth and 
statdate is that it is the only way to extract information on male 
whereabouts and movements from babse.

However, in fact the time period from birth to first appearance in 
the study population will never be used for anything, and could be 
eliminated.

Susan

>My concern wasn't so much about the group associated with the 
>members row, but rather the date.  The fact that the group would be 
>"unknown" is fine by me, but it seemed misleading to automatically 
>have that date pulled into members in cases where the the birth 
>status is a rough estimate .
>Anyway, just my two cents on a relatively minor point.  With regard 
>to the bigger picture, I think the other changes Karl mentioned to 
>the members table sound good.
>
>
>Karl O. Pinc wrote:
>
>>
>>On 04/04/2005 08:14:36 AM, Catherine Markham wrote:
>>
>>>Hi all,
>>>
>>>If you're making changes to the members table, the only thing that 
>>>comes to mind right off is whether or not it makes sense to have 
>>>birth act as a "census" in members if the bstatus is not 0.  There 
>>>were a couple messages about this on the listserv last month 
>>>ending  with Karl's response below:
>>>
>>>"Of course it's simplist for the computer if it treats all 
>>>birthdates  the same way, and in some sense easiest to understand 
>>>for the rest of  us. But this is really a science question so I 
>>>leave it to the  scientists. Regardless, I would think that 
>>>estimated bithdates would  affect the interpolation of any 
>>>subsequent censuses within the next  27 days. (Interpolation goes 
>>>up to/down from 'halfway' to the next/ prior census, unless 
>>>halfway is longer than 14 days.) If we want to  consider estimated 
>>>birthdates as "different" we should figure things  out face to 
>>>face."
>>>
>>>Still hold off on discussing this till later?  Does it even seem 
>>>like  an issue to folks who have been working with the database 
>>>longer?
>>
>>
>>We may still want to talk about the fuzzyness of birth estimates
>>but I'm going ahead anyway as the result
>>of my conversation with Susan was that we really do know what group
>>the individual was born into (even if that's 'unknown') so it makes
>>sense to put _something_ in MEMBERS.
>>
>>Karl <kop@meme.com>
>>Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
>>                 -- Robert A. Heinlein
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
>--
>Catherine Markham
>Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
>Princeton University
>Phone: (609) 258-6898 Fax: (609) 258-2712
>
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-- 
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Susan Alberts, Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, 
Durham NC 27708
919-660-7272 (phone), 919-660-7293 (FAX)