[Babase] BaBase Members Table - 2 Questions
Karl O. Pinc
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 25 Mar 2005 16:46:27 +0000
On 03/25/2005 08:35:43 AM, Catherine Markham wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have two general question about the Members table:
>
> First, in doing some queries earlier this week, I noticed that there
> were many cases where the origin was "I" and interp = 0. This seemed
> a funny to me at first - I read it as indicating the record was
> interpolated but the number of days interpolated was zero. After
> looking into it a bit more, I see that these are records for the
> birth or death date of an individual. So that made a bit more sense
> - if a census didn't happen to fall on the estimated date of birth/
> death, we would generally want some way of getting that info into
> members.
Right. This should be clear in the documentation. (Please review
so we can fix it if it's not.)
>
> But what about the birth estimates where the bstatus is greater than
> 0? Should that estimated birth date go into the members table?
Good point. Of course it's simplist for the computer if it treats
all birthdates the same way, and in some sense easiest to understand
for the rest of us. But this is really a science question
so I leave it to the scientists. Regardless, I would think that
estimated bithdates would affect the interpolation of any subsequent
censuses within the next 27 days. (Interpolation goes up to/down from
'halfway' to the next/prior census, unless halfway is longer than 14
days.) If we want to consider estimated birthdates as "different"
we should figure things out face to face.
> My second question deals with six records in Members table where
> there the date field is blank. Since the origin is "I" and interp =
> 0 for these records as well, I thought perhaps they were cases in
> Biograph where the birth or death date was blank. But no luck - all
> of these guys have birth dates entered and none have died. Does
> anyone know how these records got pulled into the Members table?
> There are no blank dates in the Census table. The six individuals
> are KRA, TAP, ORN, AMO, ISR, and APO.
They should not be there. I wouldn't worry too much about them
unless they somehow appear in the new system or have ruined
analysis already done.
Karl <kop@meme.com>
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