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Improve age estimation when dates are inexact

Dan Cornett

March 24, 2015 22:33

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When birth & death years are given as "Before" or After: ... there ought to be an implicit 'between' calculation such as:

Birth before: BYYY should be treated as if Between (BYYY, DYYY - 125) 
There may be other relationships (e.g. parents) to limit the "DYYY-125" closer to BYYY
If no DYYY or relationship constraint, then estimated BYYY - 60.

Death after: DYYY should be treated as if between (DYYY, BYYY + 125) 
There may be other relationships (e.g. children) to limit the "BYYY+125" closer to DYYY 
If no BYYY or relationship constraint, then estimated DYYY + 60.

That will prevent estimated ages in the hundreds and thousands of years.

4 comments

• 0
  
  Kevin Lawrence Hanit March 24, 2015 22:42

  I totally agree  with Dan's request.

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  David Prins March 25, 2015 00:21

  Thanks Dan for proposing this.  I am not wedded to those exact numbers, but something like that should be adopted consistently across Geni.

  At the moment, at http://www.geni.com/statistics Geni thinks I have family and ancestors who were born in the year -4713.  These is clearly not sensible.

  Also wherever dates are estimated rather than input, Geni should be clear that the date was an estimate not an input.  For example you might see in the search engine that a profile has

  Birth: estimated between 1730 and 1790

  So there is a 60 year possible range for the profile.

  But if you go to the profile you see c. 1760.

  That c. 1760 is really only the mid point of a 60 year range.

  I find that misleading. And if you happened to know that the birth was indeed c. 1760 you would not bother to go to edit the profile to enter it - because based on the profile page you would think it's already there in the data. But it isn't. It should at least say 'estimated' like in the search engine listing.

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  Dan Cornett March 25, 2015 19:09

  Just to clarify:  I'm not suggesting that this "calculation" would replace the data stored in the profile.  The profile would still store, e.g., Before BYYY or After DYYY.

  The calculation would be a function applied during the estimation of other age-based results which are displayed, such as the age of a person, or the range of dates for a parent with no dates at all.

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  David Prins March 25, 2015 22:06

  Thanks Dan for the clarification, which confirms how I understood your feature request.  Part of the problem I highlighted is where there is no date stored in the profile, but an estimated / calculated date appears on the profile as if it is a date stored in the profile - which it isn't.