Do you have any suggestions for the "Ancestor Statistics" app?

Question

Last year I made an app to calculate how long each generation in your family was. By request, I've added a few more calculations such as the average lifespan of your ancestors, and most recently, which ancestor lived to be the oldest.

Are there any other calculations you would like me to add? For example, which ancestor had the most children, which ancestor died the youngest, the average marriage age, etc?

I can add charts and visualizations if that would be of interest as well.

App is here: https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/nelson3486/stats/

Comments

"Gen length."  Maybe its meaning should be obvious, but I am having trouble with it.

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It basically calculates the average age of the ancestors ages at when your ancestor was born. Bit strange as it is not calculating birth age of first born UNLESS THE CHILD is FIRSTBORN!) I do't think there is much value except for that of interest.

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The app seems to be broken for Firefox (ver 75.0) on Windows 7. (It still works with Chrome for Android, I just checked.)

That is, there is no "calculate" button on the Ancestor Statistic page. This is what I see:

You are logged in as Lee-27655. If that is incorrect, please click here to log out.

Ancestor Statistics

If you have suggestions for this app, please post a comment on the G2G post.

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I have the same issue where it asks me to login a second time, states it is analyzing my ancestors and counts up to x amount q and where to send suggestions. There are no hyperlinks or other areas to view and click.

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I find a lot of duplicates as lots of "kissing cousins" -- wondering if there could be a button to not display duplicates.

I am happy with the oldest ancestor addition but it is pulling from an old date that says someone lived to be 109 in 1600s.  So, maybe to list a half dozen options or give the user the option of limiting the number of items to display.  Since the code is there, inserting a "number of items to display" should be easy I would think.

Lastly, love the app and so happy it was developed!!

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What does "length of generation" mean?

Is there some way to get this data in a format that can be pasted into my profile?  Thanks!

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The two things I added to my own page, were how many generations each line of my family had been in Australia, and which part of the world each of them came from. This gives me a similar picture to what I would get if I did my DNA on Ancestry. A percentage profile of where I come from. Not saying that this necessarily needs to be done. I'm sure whatever you come up with, will be something that I'll enjoy looking at, and using.

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me too

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For other readers struggling to understand Stephen Norman Craig McCallum's answer above about generation length, I found this article insightful: https://isogg.org/wiki/Generation_length

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I had a "viking" test on LivingDNA that shows 98 percent more viking ancestry than everyone else in their database   It also show subset I most closely match is Norway.  I don' t see how or where I can put that info on wikitree.

Answer 1

I have noticed what seems like an unusually large number of shoemakers among my ancestors. It would be nice to be able to get a list of the x many most common occupations among my ancestors.

Also, if we ever get a cause of death field, it would be nice to know if my family is particular susceptible to some cause of death that I might be able to take steps to mitigate.

Once the geographic component of WikiTree is in place, we should be able to generate maps of our ancestors' migration to the place of our birth. (Maybe a line for each ancestor from their birthplace to their place of death, colour coded by age, or something like that.)

Comments

I also have a lot of cordwainers and shoemakers. My take on the subject is that everybody needed shoes, and supplying that need was something that a lot of small farmers could work on when they weren't tending crops and animals. And also I have some ancestors in Boston, and particularly Braintree, where manufacture of shoes and boots became a major industry in the 19th century.

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As an adoptee I am beginning to trace my ancestors on my mother's side but also my husbands. I have discovered for example I had a great Aunt born in 1903 who died in 2011+ several other females living to past 100. Interestingly none of these women married nor left Ireland.Siblings who did marry lived much shorter lives - all 80+ .

On my husbands side have also discovered several man + women who did not marry + again lived to 100+  Again have noticed the same pattern

Is this purely a fluke or it is of interest

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For the females, not going thru childbirth probably helped a great deal in health and longevity

Answer 2

Number of children might be good, and occupations, like Greg said.  

But, please, no averages! They seem rather pointless in a genealogical framework.  If you say that my ancestors got married at 'average age 20' - then what about the others who got married at a different age? And why would you want to know, anyway?

Comments

Averages are not at all pointless.  They are useful for example when looking at changing trends, differences across the country over time etc.  As to your example of the variation in marriage ages, there are statistical tools and methods that can give you useful information on this.

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I like the idea of seeing how many children different branches had.

Actually, what I've been wanting, is something that will create a picture of an actually tree, with names on the tree. We actually always picture our family tree upside down. Our ancestors should actually make up the roots of our tree, and our descendants the branches. So it would be nice to see a tree picture that can be produced, with a couple as the trunk, children as the branches, grandchildren as twigs off the branches, and great grand children as leaves on the twigs, all of course attached to their respective parents. And maybe you could have two or three generations of roots below the trunk. Anyway, something I've wanted for awhile, but probably requires someone more artsy.

Answer 3

We could add the 8x great-grandparents. Just a thought. I've been using this app and the dynamic tree to create that chart on my profile.

Comments

Great idea Chris!  I like the chart on your page.

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Actually. Just looking at the app, and knowing the chart that Chris has on his profile, which I've copied onto mine from somewhere in the past. It would perhaps be good if we could control how many generations are looked up, and perhaps if the chart has an option for which stats we want presented, including where appropriate, a percentage.

Answer 4

I don't understand why reports like this are in a separate app and not integrated as a report within WikiTree itself.

It would be a lot more useful if it were integrated and available as one of the many reports / charts available on WikiTree.

Comments

It might be integrated at some point. I'm curious, why do you say it would be a lot more useful? Mainly because you wouldn't have to login again? It's already linked from Tree and Tools pages.

There are benefits to keeping it independent. Jamie can experiment and make changes very quickly. There is no risk of impacting other parts of the site, so we don't need to go through careful rounds of testing. Using the API also means there are no privacy implications. Making sure we don't violate privacy promises is one of the things that slows down a lot of our releases.

Keeping these apps independent also means they serve as a model for other developers, so they know that they can be creative and try things without having to go through any special development or integration process.

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There are trade-offs between both methods. You listed a number of reasons for keeping it separate. There are also good reasons for having it integrated.

• No repeated login
• Same look & feel as the rest of WikiTree. For example, in the Find Brick Wall Ancestors report, it would be great if I could get more than just the WikiTree ID in the output list, like the name of the person, with the link to their ID, and the standard ancestor tree link, or descendant link. It would be great if this could be turned into a better looking WikiTree report instead of a bare-bones app. 
• The ability to run these reports on other profiles besides myself, from those other profiles in their Tree & Tools page. Especially on profiles of which I'm the manager, or on the Trusted List. I manage multiple family trees, not just my own. In the Brick Wall report, it seems I can run the report on other profiles, if I happen to know the ID. So, I would be going back and forth between WikiTree and this App.

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A free standing app could easily be designed to be indistinguishable to the user from a feature that is integrated within WikiTree.  Whether the feature is a separate app or part of the WikiTree system is a high level architecture decision that does not need to impact the user in any way.

The need for extra login could be eliminated by passing that information as part of the interface when going from a link on WikiTree to the app.  The look and feel could also easily be made the same - it's simply a matter of the skin.  The other variables, like the person's name, could also easily be included.  Running reports using a different profile as the base probably introduces security/privacy issues that would entail major effort to implement, though.

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I do like the idea of it being more integrated. I'm not sure if that would be anymore consuming on the Wikitree system or not.

Answer 5

The app doesn't work at the moment... (!)
It calculates for a while, then shows a(n almost completely) blank screen...

Comments

I can't get it to work

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Not working for me either, does some computing then goes to a nearly blank screen.  Using Opera on a Mac, maybe that's the issue.

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Okay, I tried it on Firefox, it works fine there.  Still on a Mac.

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NO results in Edge either... :(

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Also doesn’t work on Safari (oniPhone)

Answer 6

I would like to see a migration map that show the movement of the ancestors.

Answer 7

Age of women at first childbirth. It'd be interesting to track it over centuries. Simply the youngest/oldest female ancestor who gave birth would be somewhat less interesting, but if there were a scatter chart with the year (1500 to 2000, for instance) as one axis and age of the woman at the other, that'd be of interest to me to see if there were a trend or just random noise.

Or the ancestor couple where the difference between husband and wife's ages was the greatest in either direction.

Answer 8

I'd be curious about average ages at first marriage for males and females in each generation.

Answer 9

Average ages for first marriages would be nice. I remember calculating this average for different families many (many, many) years ago.

Answer 10

I like averages, but I think medians are often a better measure, it would be nice to have both.

I should like the ability to see statistics for sibling groups. The average longevity of sibling groups could be a broad indicator of prosperity for example, and the average and maximum  distance between siblings would show the effects of migrations, modern transport etc.

Answer 11

I wasn't aware of the app but it sounds great.  If you don't already have it as a feature how about average (mean) number of ancestors by generation and average (mean) number of descendants by generation?

Answer 12

I don't know how difficult this would be, but I am particularly curious about following separate lines - like avg lifespan on father's side and mother's side.  I did enjoy finding out my oldest living relative - I didn't know any of them made it to over 100.  Cool application.

Answer 13

I would like to see the oldest ancestor in each generation.

This app helped me to find errors in data, as my "oldest" ancestors listed had errors in their birth/death dates. I've fixed two so far, and am researching the dates for a third time to resolve discrepancies. This profile ([[Diffee-33|Elizabeth (Diffee) Thrasher]]) seems unfixable at this time, as her profile has seemingly estimated birth/death dates. I suspect that she didn't live to be 107, but since I don't manage the profile, nor does it have references, I am unable at this time to see my oldest ancestor with this app. And that gets back to my suggestion: If I could see the oldest ancestor for each generation, I could get a better idea of how old my oldest ancestor is while still working on data corrections.

It may even be useful to list the top ten oldest ancestors at the bottom of the app, or even the top five.

I like the app though, even if it doesn't work for me yet.

Comments

It's great that this app is helping to find errors.

But what's preventing you from editing https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Diffee-33? That's an Open profile of a person born in the 1700s, it's unsourced, and the profile manager has not edited in well over a year. Furthermore, there's another unsourced profile at https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Thrasher-539 that looks like a duplicate (and has been an unmerged match for the last 10 months). WikiTree depends on all of us to make positive contributions to improve profiles like that one.

As an interested descendant, you ought to be looking for sources for this profile, and editing the profile to correct errors you find after you've identified better sources. And you could be pushing a merge with that duplicate profile. I note that one of the profiles for this woman had her LNAB as Unknown, so it may not be a good idea to assume that her name was Diffee unless you find a basis for that.

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What is preventing me from editing the profile, and completing the merges? A lack of references. I'm still searching for references but finding nothing so far besides family trees on other websites. There seem to be at least two women with this name who married a man with the same name, and so I want to be sure I am not accidentally merging profiles of two different women (note the different place of birth). It may be her husband who needs to be separated into two different profiles. When I find references I'll add the information and make the merge if appropriate. For now I think it is better than they remain an unmerged match. I agree that her last name at birth is probably not Diffee, and I'm researching with the assumption that her last name at birth is unknown. My current strategy is to go down one and two generations to descendants and other relatives who have references. I'm currently working back up to her from there, adding references to her relatives, hopefully to discover something useful about her in the process.

I added the link to a profile as an example of what may prevent people from effectively using this app. This profile is the third profile I've worked on in an attempt to use this app. The first two I found references for and fixed the dates. This one is going to involve more difficult research.

I'll continue searching, but in the meantime I wanted to suggest an addition to the app that may help people like me. I am unable to get an oldest age of my ancestors using this app because the further back in time I go, the more profiles I find with roughly estimated dates. I suggested two possible workarounds (add the profile with the oldest age to each generation, or add the top ten oldest ancestors at the bottom). Another solution is to allow the app user to select the number of generations to include in the data.

Thanks for your comment.

Answer 14

Two things: which ancestor died youngest? And a way to get this info for someone else - I maintain a tree for my wife’s family, and I’d like to find her longest- and shortest-lived ancestors 

Comments

I like that second suggestion! If you are profile manager for your wife's profile, you ought to be able to get these statistics for her lineage. And I would like to be able to use this app for Open profiles.

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Me too!  My 97 year old mother was trying to get the answers to this with paper and pencil.  I'd love to be able to run the report with her Wiki ID

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The Ancestor Listmaker tool at https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/listmaker/ (newer than this 3-year-old thread) might help serve your wishes, Shirlea.

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Thank you, Ellen!

Answer 15

This is a great app, but it strikes me that it has an unexpected use that could be capitalized.  When I ran it, it showed my oldest ancestor at 233 years! Since I am reasonably confident that this ancestor is not still alive, what it actually did was enabled me to identify an ancestor without a recorded date of death, and I was able to go in and fix this problem.  I would say that this functionality could be improved if there were an option to, say, list the 10 or 20 oldest ancestors.  I have a large pool of ancestors, many of whom were automatically imported from Ancestry.com when I joined Wikitree several years ago, and this app could prove helpful in "pruning" my garden of ancestors. I am guessing that some others may face a similar problem.  

Secondly, I think it might be helpful to offer the user the opportunity to limit the number of generations or to choose a particular line to analyze.  For example, does my father's line or my mother's line tend to be longer lived?  Did certain lines have a longer or shorter generational cycle?

This is a great app, and I appreciate you adding it.

Answer 16

So cool!  I was surprised that the average generation length worked out to about 30.  Is that consistent with an overall average?

Comments

Yes, that's pretty common.  People get married in their early 20's typically, and have kids until their early 40's.  It can get skewed if a man remarries with a younger wife, or if a husband is killed at war and the widow doesn't remarry (if you had several ancestors in the Civil War, for instance, there might be a dip at that time).

Another thing I found interesting - the "average" lifespan at that time is often listed as maybe 30 years, yet all of my generations (except one) is 63 years or later.  When you take into account that maybe 40% of children died before age 3, then it starts to make sense.  What this shows is that for people that reached child-bearing age, the average life-span was about 65, even to the 1700's, and possible much farther back than that.

Answer 17

I tried it. I like it! However, a couple comments.

Several of my ancestors have a listed date of birth, but not of death. How are they included in the average lifespan? I think some notes on how values are computed would be helpful.

The stats said my 7th generation had a generation length of 63! That came from comparing the average of 11 values of generation 6 against the average of 6 values in generation 7. Those 6 people in generation 7 have only 3 descendants in generation 6.

Answer 18

I agree with what several others have said about making this app available for other profiles besides my own. I'd especially like to use it for my husband's profile.

It would be an added bonus to have it available for any profile on my Watchlist, or any Open profile. Honestly, though, I can't say I'd actually use it much for any of these others. Is there a downside to having it available for any profile? Seems like all it would take is a way to select the profile ID.

Answer 19

It won't load the results no matter how much I refresh or come back later.

Comments

You might want to try a different browser.  It didn't work for my Mac using Opera, but it was fine on Firefox.

Answer 20

Jamie, I would love to use this app, but it seems to abend without giving any results.  It gets to somewhere around 540 ancestors and then stops.  What do I need to do now?  I'm using an imac and tried it several times.

Comments

I'll have to add some error reporting to see what's going wrong. Maybe later in the week.