[Babase] ranks data -- conference needed?
Daphne A Onderdonk (donderdo@Princeton.EDU)
babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Fri, 04 Feb 2005 12:02:31 -0500
Hi all,
I thought I'd chime in here since I can maybe shed some light on some of these issues with male ranks. I'll respond to Susan's second email separately.
> Over the past 18 months or so I have been sending data to Daphne
> that
> is meant to be entered in the ranks file of babase (it is data on
> male ranks). This is combination of actual male rankings (e.g. for
> 2001 and 2002) and corrections of existing ranks. There are a
> number
> of these files, which Daphne (mostly) kept good track of but never
> entered, presumably because she did not have time.
Yes, the main reason the corrections and new ranks didn't get entered was that I didn't have time - it was on my list of things to do before I left, and unfortunately it was one of the things I just didn't get to. I tried to organize it all as best I could for Catherine.
Also, I never really felt great about our tentative solution to the problem of how to get the new ranks into the Ranks table. We talked about doing the new adult male ranks manually, since there is currently no way to get them in using Ranker (it will of course be possible when the new male maturation tables are in there and the "ranked by" dates are entered). But using what ranktype? Susan had suggested using ALL, even though it would just be for adult males. Using ranktype ADM (adult males) could be weird, since eventually we will be generating that ranktype in a different way (using Ranker). Neither seemed great to me, but I haven't thought of a better solution. It sounds like you're still planning to go ahead with the manual entry (using ranktype ALL?).
That makes me think, though, that if you pushed to get the "ranked by" dates into the new table (if the table exists yet), you could do the adult male ranks properly using Ranker, with ranktype ADM. Just a thought - I know you want them in there soon.
Also, I did start to address at some point some of the corrections that Susan and Karen sent me, and I encountered some problems with them. I can't remember exactly what they were at this point, but I think it had to do with individuals not being in the corrections list that were actually in the group at the time, or something like that. It was at a time when Susan wasn't around to ask, and I think it got put back on the back burner. Just something for Leah to be aware of as she's dealing with the corrections.
OK, more soon.
Daphne