[Babase] Ranks data errors

Daphne A Onderdonk (donderdo@Princeton.EDU) babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 04 Feb 2005 13:25:31 -0500


Hi again,

Trying to shed some more light...

> Leah and I have encountered some issues with ranks.dbf in trying 
> to 
> both use it and update it. I am fairly certain that these problems 
> did not exist when i last used it to analyze male ranks (for the 
> queueing paper). I think the problems were introduced when we 
> tried 
> to increase the number of different rank categories (beyond just 
> "rank" and "frank") and designated an "all" category that is 
> supposed 
> to rank everyone together.

I'm pretty sure these problems have nothing to do with the transition from "rank" and "frank" to different ranktypes - they predated that transition.  The original switch didn't involve any new ranktypes - the "rank" just changed to ranktype ALL, and "frank" changed to ranktype ADF.  The only new one that has been subsequently used is ranktype ALF (all females), which obviously shouldn't have affected male ranks.  

> 1.	Rank order among age-sex classes not consistent (most begin 
> with the order ADM, JUVM, ADF, JUVF)
> 
> o	grp 2.20 changes to ADM, ADF, JUVM, JUVF 01/02/96
> o	grp 2.10 changes to ADM, ADF, JUVM, JUVF 01/04/96
> o	grp 1.20 changes to ADM, ADF, JUVM, JUVF 01/01/97

Yes, this problem drove me crazy and made it extremely frustrating to try to do anything with ALL group ranks.  Since the order of age-sex classes wasn't consistent, you couldn't tell where adult males stopped.  This has always been the case since I started working, so it definitely predates the transition to different ranktypes.

> 2.	Duplicate ranks
> 
> o	NAF, VOR, both rank 18, one F and one M, grp 1.20, 01/04/96
> o	ALE, KAT, both rank 16, one F and one M, grp 2.10, 01/03/95
> o	LEW, LIN, both rank 17, one F and one M, grp 2.10, 01/03/95
> o	LIO, NYO, both rank 18, one F and one M, grp 2.10, 01/03/95
> 
> 3.	Some very low ranks for adult males (ADM) and juvenile males (JUVM)
> 
> o	LEW, age 5, rank 70, grp 2.0, 01/05/94
> o	FAV, age 13, rank 71, grp 2.0, 01/03/94
> o	NEL, age 16, rank 73, grp 2.0, 01/04/94
> 
> 4.      Random males within the low ranking females. Seems to be a 
> group 2.0 problem. Could the sex be wrong for these individuals?
> 
> o	WAL, JNB, NYU, grp 2.0, 01/03/92
> 
> 
> 5.	Adult males with in the adult female ranks
> 
> o	JIT, age 14, rank 7, 01/08/97. Also adult females ranked 
> 5,6,7,8,9,10 etc.

I think all these problems (except maybe for the really low ranks, which I'm not sure about and will have to look into) stem from that old problem of the males that moved between groups in a given month.  This resulted in duplicate and missing ranks.  For example, ALE was in both 2.10 and 2.20 in 3/95 - there is an extra rank 16 in 2.10 that month (ALE), and rank 16 is missing from 2.20 that month.  JIT's  extra rank 7 in 2.10 in 8/97 is because he was in both 2.20 and 2.10 that month, and his 2.20 rank got put in 2.10.  The problem with Ranker was fixed, but the ranks already updated in the Ranks table remained.  I thought that Karen's and Susan's corrections were addressing these very problems, so I'm not sure why it would be a problem to enter the corrections into this table.  (I think I do remember their saying that the corrections were not exhaustive, though.)

> (As an aside, we also found that the sname change for DHOW (adult 
> male, non-natal) to DOW has not yet been made in ranks (and 
> perhaps 
> other places in the database) -- perhaps this is already on the 
> list 
> of "to do" as the change was just made).

I was 99.9% sure I had changed Dhow's sname everywhere, so I checked Ranks.  The version I have has DOW (Dhow's new sname) with ranktype ALL in 97 and 98, and DHO (Dhoruba) with ranktype ALF in 1.10 for a couple months in 2003.  So I don't know whether this is a version problem with the Ranks table (the version I'm using is from about a month ago, but the changes to Dhow's sname were made in June 04), or if you saw the sname DHO and thought that was Dhow (it's Dhoruba), but it all looks good to me.

Hope this sheds some more light - let me know if you have any other questions.
Daphne