[Babase] One user's suggestion on rank data

Jeanne Altmann altj at princeton.edu
Fri Oct 13 10:46:10 EDT 2006


Thanks for your ideas Russ.  It's helped stimulate some thinking about
BABASE, users, documentation, and training for diverse projects. 
jeanne

-----Original Message-----
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of Russ Van
Horn
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 5:44 PM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: RE: [Babase] One user's suggestion on rank data

Hello all,
   Thanks for your thoughts, Jeanne. I agree that a single sample size
associated with a particular individual's rank wouldn't convey the full
context of that individual's rank. I guess I'd assumed that anyone who
wanted to evaluate the rank data would compare sample sizes across
individuals within a month, or across months, etc., but that might not
be a valid assumption. That said, I do think some information could be
gleaned from even a raw count of the observed interactions, although the
information would differ across sample sizes. As an extreme example,
suppose there are seven adult males ranked during one month. Knowing
that baboon Larry was observed participating in 120 agonisms during that
month wouldn't tell a user how those agonisms were distributed across
the other baboons (e.g., Larry might have been seen in 2 agonistic
interactions with Curly, and 118 agonistic interactions with Moe, or
Larry might have been seen in 20 interactions with each of the six other
adult male baboons). However, knowing that Curly was seen in only two
agonistic encounters during the month would allow the user to infer that
Curly could not have been seen in agonisms with all of the other six
adult males, and that inference might influence the use of Curly's rank.

Perhaps, then, users might benefit from assessing three numbers
associated with each individual's rank: the number of observed agonisms
involving that individual (e.g., for Larry in the example above, n=120),
the number of individuals with which the 'focal' 
individual was observed in agonistic encounters (e.g., in the first
scenario above for Larry, n=2), and the total number of individuals with
that rank type during that time period (e.g., in the example above,
n=7).
   I agree that developing a set of criteria and measures of rank
uncertainty would be challenging, and that in any case it might make
sense for those criteria to vary depending on the project at hand. I
hadn't realized that the matrices for each month are in BABASE. Upon
reflection, I think having access to the monthly matrices would allow
users to evaluate the sample size used in determining an individual's
rank within the context of the sample sizes of the other individuals;
would it be possible to construct links/relations in the database from
the ranks back to the monthly matrices? Again, I'm not that familiar
with database construction, but if the ranker program is being modified
then perhaps this is an appropriate time to consider this option.
   Cheers,

Russ

>Hi Russ,
>Thanks for the suggestion based on your perspective as a user of the 
>ranks tables.  Ranks are our most derived data in BABASE.  What one 
>would consider the raw data are the matrices for each month, which are 
>also in BABASE, and those are what someone might like to take the time 
>to work with in situations as you describe, not a trivial project!  No 
>single number would be useable as the sample size in determing any 
>individual's rank, to a considerable extent because it depends on 
>sample sizes of all other individuals as well, so one would probably 
>want to develop a set of criteria and metrices to use to create some 
>sort of uncertainty measure, probably one that would depend on the 
>project at hand.

--
........................................................................
..............................
R. C. Van Horn, Ph.D.
Research Associate
Department of Biology
Box 90338		phone: 919-660-7297, 660-7306
Duke University		email: rvanhorn at duke.edu
Durham, NC  27708-0338	web: http://www.duke.edu/~rvanhorn
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