[Babase] babase needs and priorities

Stephanie Combes babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 07 May 2004 16:09:57 -0400


Dear Babasers,
   This is a follow-up email to Susan's regarding dcauses, as well as a 
request for discussion on how we want to prioritize current needs.

As the first data conversion task, we have identified an issue with 
dcauses.  I think Susan's suggestion that we don't worry about doing all of 
the recoding right now is a good one.  If we simply change all of the 
dcause blanks for animals (with a status of 1) to an unknown cause of 
death, we will "fix" biograph sufficiently for Karl to try the conversion. 
We can keep track of the animals for whom we changed their dcause, and fix 
them later (with the new dcauses).

The other big babase task on my plate is the analysis for Joan.  Currently, 
I am midway through adding the information that Joan requested.  But, due 
to the repstats and missing tdate issue, I haven't gone further.

So, I need suggestions and thoughts on which of these 2 tasks to move to 
the top of the priority list.  Do I go as far as I can for Joan and send 
her what we have (which would mean losing about 10% of the reprostate info) 
or wait until we straighten out some of the tdate questions? 
Alternatively, I could dive into the dcause recoding, and have fixed 
dcauses for Karl to work with.

Sigh.  My Friday brain needs some input from babase fans.
-steph