Another Merge Records question

[Jay Fletcher]

Hi John,

I'm making a modified version of the Merge Records extension to meet my needs for merging GEDCOMs that I have downloaded from an online database into my family tree. Since all of the GEDCOMS come from the same place I can count on them having almost identical data for each person, so I would like to change the match scoring algorithm to better suit this situation.

I noticed that there is a function called DateQuality that is called several times in your Python script, but it is never defined. This is in contrast to similar functions called PlaceQuality and NameQuality that are defined.

I'm not an expert in Python, but I'm surprised that the script even functions without DateQuality being defined. Perhaps execution just passes through the calls to the function without doing anything?

Do you have a version of the extension that includes a definition of DateQuality that you could share with me? I would like to use it as part of my modifications.

Thank you,

Jay

[Jay Fletcher]

Perhaps a better question is where can I find the definition of the DateQuality function? Also, how is the command "SetTauCutoff(55.,2.)" related to the DateQuality function?

[Richard Blake]

Hi

DateQuality is defined in the GEDitCOMII.py module.

Regards, Richard

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[Jay Fletcher]

Thank you, Richard. Do you happen to know where the mathematical formulas in the DateQuality function come from? I would like to understand how they work.

[Richard Blake]

I'm afraid not. I took a look but I couldn't make sense of it. One for John I think.

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[John Nairn, Developer]

About 10 years ago, I started writing a paper on Date Quality and it explains what is implemented in the "Merge Records" extension. It has interesting "fuzzy" math and final solution involving Laplace Transforms (which I thought was interesting). I never finished the paper because I did not know where to send it for publication and I got involved in other things as well. If you are interested, here is link to a rough draft of that paper:

Date Quality Paper

The description of Date Quality is mostly complete. The end was to have more examples and that part is incomplete. The appendix was planned to show the algorithm used in the "Merge Records" extension. I welcome any comments. Maybe I will finish it some day.

The new GEDitCOM II version yesterday did revise the "Merge Records" extension. It added an option to automatically accept matches above a certain match score. Those match scores use Data Quality but also use a lot more (with somewhat arbitrary weighting factors).

John  Nairn