[Babase] Sexual cycle observation periods having no observed cycle events

Susan Alberts alberts at duke.edu
Sat Feb 23 17:02:51 EST 2008


I don't feel qualified to comment on this, I would need input from JA  
and Tabby.
S

On Feb 23, 2008, at 4:32 PM, Karl O. Pinc wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It looks like there are a few periods of time when there is supposed
> to be observation of sexual cycle events but there are no sexual
> cycle events observed.  For these time periods CYCSTATS (but not
> MMINTERVALS or MDINTERVALS) has rows, but these rows contain
> little in the way of information.
>
> Probably, something needs to be done to the data.  But that's not
> the issue in which I'm interested.
>
> I want to know if the cycstats building process is 'wrong' and
> needs fixing, or if that will just be sweeping data problems under
> the rug.
>
> My inclination is to leave the programs alone.  Trying to write
> programs that "do the right thing" when the data is bad
> is ultimately futile, and makes it more difficult to
> discover and diagnose problems.
>
> Let me know.  The fix should be a matter of a few minutes if that's
> what we want to do.
>
> Note that the problem is, I think, due to some 1 day long periods
> of observation that interrupt longer periods of no observation.
>
> Another possibility to consider is to put validation rules
> on CYCSTATS that prohibit this sort of data (NULL for all of
> dins, dr, cpids, and cpide).  I'm not sure I like this, for
> 2 reasons.  The first is that the data is all generated, and
> (maybe) we should be able to prevent the generation of bad
> data.  (I can always have the data generation program
> die and spit out an error message.)  The second is that
> I've not thought through all the
> implications, there may be times when we want (or need)
> to have this sort of "empty" data.  (Obviously, we don't
> really _want_ it, but there could be times when it's
> either unavoidable or the lesser evil.)
>
> FYI, I found these by looking at the result of:
> select * from cycstats where not exists (select 1 from mmintervals  
> where mmintervals.sname = cycstats.sname and mmintervals.date =  
> cycstats.date);
>
> The results happen to correspond with the problems revealed
> by the following query:
>
> babase=> select * from cycstats where dins is null and dr is null  
> and cpids is null and cpide is null order by sname, date;
>   csid  |    date    | sname | state | dins | dr | cpids | cpide
> --------+------------+-------+-------+------+----+-------+-------
>  271379 | 1991-07-24 | HUR   | D     |      |    |       |
>  341226 | 1980-04-13 | NEE   | S     |      |    |       |
>  428268 | 1980-05-31 | WIL   | S     |      |    |       |
> (3 rows)
>
> (Note that the 'HUR' state is just plain wrong.  The individual
> is pregnant on that day, not deturgesent.)
>
> babase=> select * from cycstats, cycgaps where dins is null and dr  
> is null and cpids is null and cpide is null and cycstats.sname =  
> cycgaps.sname and cycstats.date = cycgaps.date order by  
> cycstats.sname, cycstats.date;
>   csid  |    date    | sname | state | dins | dr | cpids | cpide |  
> gapid | sname | code |    date    | state
> --------+------------+-------+-------+------+----+-------+------- 
> +-------+-------+------+------------+-------
>  271379 | 1991-07-24 | HUR   | D     |      |    |       |        
> |   143 | HUR   | P    | 1991-07-24 | D
>  341226 | 1980-04-13 | NEE   | S     |      |    |       |        
> |   325 | NEE   | P    | 1980-04-13 | S
>  428268 | 1980-05-31 | WIL   | S     |      |    |       |        
> |   354 | WIL   | P    | 1980-05-31 | S
> (3 rows)
>
> babase=> select * from cycstats, cycpoints_cycles where dins is  
> null and dr is null and cpids is null and cpide is null and  
> cycstats.sname = cycpoints_cycles.sname and cycpoints_cycles.date =  
> cycstats.date order by cycstats.sname, cycstats.date;
>  csid | date | sname | state | dins | dr | cpids | cpide | cid |  
> sname | seq | series | cpid | date | edate | ldate | code | source
> ------+------+-------+-------+------+----+-------+-------+----- 
> +-------+-----+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+--------
> (0 rows)
>
>
> Karl <kop at meme.com>
> Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
>                  -- Robert A. Heinlein
>
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-----------------------------------------------
Susan Alberts, Dept. Biology, Duke University, Durham NC 27708. Phone  
919-660-7272, Fax 919-660-7293. alberts at duke.edu



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