[Babase] members diffs analyzed
Lacey Maryott
lacey.maryott at duke.edu
Mon Jun 11 13:50:45 EDT 2007
Hello all,
I spent a nice portion of today looking into the differences in
members. There weren't that many, so I thought it worth it to ensure the
changes were all expected differences. I copied only those rows marked
(-) or (+) (distinct differences) into Word, which constituted 28
pages. I was able to narrow it all down to only 4 pages of differences
which I thought should be discussed. Below, I have outlined the "types"
of issues which arose.
1. Almost 2 full pages of the 4 are interpolation issues at the end of
1988 and beginning of 1989, placing animals in groups 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and
1.4. The last census in 1988 is Dec 21. So, the question, which Karl
posed earlier, is do we override the interp program, and Manually change
everything through Dec 31 to group 1.00 and then anything after 12-31 to
grp 1.* (whichever applies). This way, we are manually telling the
interp program how to interpret these dates. Karl has mentioned he
could potentially add a "Supergroup" as a column to members view, and
thus, any of these censused under the Alto's supergroup during this time
would appear as "in" Alto's supergroup.
2. The second group of problems is how individuals get interpreted when
they die. It seems animals are put in "unknown" grp 9.00 on their
statdate. So on the day they die, or days immediately following... they
are marked as having "unknown" group membership. This is the
documentation associated with this assignment
*
Individuals are no longer always placed in a group, the group in
which they were last censused, on their Statdate
<https://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system.html#Biograph-Statdate>
and this "location" no longer interpolates.
When first written, the interpolation procedure was designed to
work with females, who are unlikely to be absent from their group
for more than 28 days. (Twice the 14 day interpolation limit.) By
placing an individual in a group on their Statdate, the group in
which they were last censused, the females were assured a row in
MEMBERS
<https://papio.biology.duke.edu/babase_system.html#MEMBERS> for
every day of their lives. Further, analysis was simplified as each
of these rows associated the females with their group (even though
at the end of their lives they may not have been present in the
group.)
The new interpolation procedure does not consider the Statdate in
its determination of the individual's group membership on that
day, although, as always, when the Statdate is a death date it
does stop interpolation.
-- It just seems like when a baby dies, and its mother carries it for a
week, its location isn't unknown, or when an animal is seen being eaten,
or half its body is found. I just thought I would point out this issue
that stood out, even though the documentation explains why this decision
was made.
3. Another substantial set of the outstanding issues were Adult males
which have demog notes stating they are seen alone, so their group will
need to be changed to 10.00 for those days.
4. The last group popped up because of incomplete census days which need
to be entered as demog notes. Once that gets taken care of, those will
clean up.
Issue Number 1 should be decided on by Jeanne and Susan. 3&4 are
something that either I can fix, or will be fixed once we get demog
notes in. Number 2, I'm guessing isn't something we can do anything
about without going back through and finding the circumstances of each
and every observed or known death and changing those, so should I
disregard those as "issues" altogether?
That's what we have for now on the census data, and thus, other than
Leah and I Working on doing 2006B in both foxpro and postgres, just to
ensure the programs work, I think we are done with foxpro??? YAY!
everyone high-five your neighbor! :)
Cheers,
Lacey
--
Lacey Maryott
Alberts Lab
Department of Biology
Duke University
ph: 919-660-7306
fax: 919-660-7293
Lacey.Maryott at duke.edu
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