[Babase] Re: census "A"'s
Karl O. Pinc
kop at meme.com
Thu May 11 11:17:17 EDT 2006
On 05/11/2006 09:29:40 AM, Leah Gerber wrote:
> Hi Karl, I think I figured out part of my confusion with the census.
> The documentation was not quite clear for these particular rows. They
> have a "D" for demography row. It makes sense to me that it should
> not be in census, that census should have only an "A" or "C". The
> documentation states that, in order to have an "A", there needs to be
> a "0" on the census sheet. These 3 particular rows have nothing on
> the census row. They don't show up on the sheets until the next
> census. For this situation should they still be considered "A" as
> absent coming from a "0" or should we change the documentation to
> state that there doesn't necessarily need to be a "0" for them to be
> considered absent.
It won't work with that literal wording because _all_ the individuals
not in the group have no "0" either. It's something of a question
of "when are the individual's in the group?" along with "what
is the relationship between what's written on the census sheet and
who's in the group?" I think there was a procedural question
decided by Jeanne and Susan that said something like "the census
sheet has data for every individual we consider to be in the
group." This would be true even when, say, Jeanne decides
retroactively that an individual was born even though they
don't show up in the census. So I'm thinking it's a question
for the non-existant procedure manual that says what you guys
do to enter the data. The reason why those 3 rows are confusing
is because the individuals were put (with a 0) on the census sheet
that was entered into babase even though they're not on the
census paper records. Perhaps one reason this is so rare is
because the procedure has not been consistently applied.
I'd like to see the wiki as a place for you guys to put such
procedural information so it does not get lost in the shuffle.
I could explain explain explain in the Babase system documention
but it's not really something that has to do with the way
the computer operates, and it's not something that you can
quickly extend or clarify. The wiki solves those problems.
Karl <kop at meme.com>
Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
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