[Babase] ranking clarification needed

Jeanne Altmann altj at Princeton.EDU
Wed Sep 5 13:58:33 EDT 2007


Thanks Tabby, and I agree that this is important for us, particularly
when we are working on a year's rankings; we often do combinations of
months, and it is a valuable tool. Although we have primarily done this
for females and primarily in the periods Tabby indicates, I can imagine
doing in for the 6 mos or year prior to a significant event such as a
male's dispersal or an individual's maturation or fission of a group.  


[Aside to Susan, Historically, we often used the secondary-data
timelines of rank order for some of this purpose rather than matrices,
but those are derived by hand and those have not been kept up routinely
in recent years; also, one has to add reversals by hand on these as well
for some purposes (we could have a printout form of ranks that replaced
those hand ones, which might be neat to add to a nonurgent list, but
that wouldn't get the reversals).]

jeanne



-----Original Message-----
From: babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu
[mailto:babase-bounces at eeblistserv.princeton.edu] On Behalf Of kfenn
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 9:32 AM
To: The Baboon Database Project
Subject: Re: [Babase] ranking clarification needed

Susan Alberts wrote:
>
>
> Having said that, upon looking back at Tabby's document, I am not sure

> what she meant by " I'd rather not have the programmed dumbed down to 
> say "January" or "January-June".  I like to see the selected dates 
> print out below the matrix as the old ranker did."  My impression was 
> that you are asking Jun specifically to provide the opportunity to see

> either Jan or Jan - Jun or whatever period you want -- this doesn't 
> fit with the "dumbed down" comment or what I thought you were asking 
> for - Please clarify?
>
Yes, I'll try to clarify this.
I'm asking for control over the date input that creates the matrix.  Old

Ranker had the user input the start and end dates in (numeric) date 
format.  I think it's an important feature to retain.  Although I 
generally use set time periods like Jan-Jun or single months, I don't 
want the time periods set into a dropdown text menu (that's what I mean 
by  'dumbed down').  With the current format I don't have the control to

create a matrix that crosses years (maybe I want to run it with and 
without December of the previous year), I can't do cumulative matrices 
over odd months (like Mar-Sept), or run a matrix the corresponds to the 
dates of odd environmental conditions, should they happen to be of 
interest to someone.  If  Ranker is meant to do one thing only and do it

safely, dropdown menus seem appropriate.  However New Ranker seems to be

designed for better data exploration (i.e. the drag and drop rank 
changes) so I'd like to retain the same flexibility with the dates.


Tabby

>
> Thanks,
> Susan
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> --- Jun Y.
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Babase at www.eco.princeton.edu <http://www.eco.princeton.edu>
>> http://www.eco.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/babase
>
> -----------------------------------------------
> Susan Alberts, Dept. Biology, Duke University, Durham NC 27708. Phone 
> 919-660-7272, Fax 919-660-7293. alberts at duke.edu
<mailto:alberts at duke.edu>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Tabby Fenn
Research Assistant

Dept of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
401 Guyot Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544

609 258-6898 (Ph)
609 258-2712 (Fx)

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