Notes From Nature Talk

Educated Guessing

  • stewjack by stewjack

    Educated Guessing

    Jenny Lake Wyoming is located in the Grand Teton National Park. It is a very large National Park. There is a Count in Wyoming called Teton. It is very likely that I am correct, but it was a guess.

    Posted

  • ghewson by ghewson

    I think we want to avoid guessing, and leave the filling in of missing data to a later phase of the project. I see you've commented in this thread: Can't understand the city

    Jenny Lake is in Teton County, but I left the County blank when I had one of those samples. I had another label that just had "El Dorado", which probably meant El Dorado County, California, but I left the Country and State fields blank there. See all the El Dorados here: El Dorado (disambiguation). I think we can discount Mars, but the others... 😃

    Posted

  • joanball by joanball scientist

    Actually, we it would be very helpful if you could do a quick google search to check the county or state when it is missing. And if you know the correct county or state, to fill it in. Thanks a lot for your help!

    Posted

  • Pict by Pict

    The help text specifically says that we should use internet search to guide us if the info on the label is insufficient, so I've no clue why ghewson would omit county and even state information if the label says el dorado.

    Jenny Lake definitely is in Teton County, as confirmed by the Wikipedia article on it.

    Posted

  • ghewson by ghewson in response to Pict's comment.

    There's no need for snide comments, my friend.

    Posted

  • SandersClan by SandersClan in response to Pict's comment.

    Ouch, Pict, we try to keep good karma around here.

    Posted

  • xairbusdriver by xairbusdriver

    I think the key phrase from joanball is:

    if you know the correct county or state, to fill it in.

    I interpret "know" to mean "if I can determine to my satisfaction." The problem I see, if I understand how this project works, is that even if 10% of us get something correct, the other 90% will still cause the specimen to be flagged. What I don't know is what or even when that flag occurs. Is it created during the project so that it gets put back into the queue for more 'eyes?' Or is the flag not actually applied until after the project is complete? Of course, I don't even know if my theory is possible or what percentages might be in place!

    I think what I end up doing is to attempt to verify, if I can, anything that is not clearly obvious. Virginia has, of course, many fewer counties since the 1970's, but it may not be possible to say that all of an extinct county is now in another. Unfortunately, one cannot type data into the county field.

    I have found The Plant List - Help page helpful in filling in some missing letters when the label is hand-written. That site allows a couple of characters ("?" and "*") to be placed in parts of a name that you can't figure out. This can even help when the collector misspelled the name. But even then, if there is a nothing found, I use the "Skip this field" function. I'm willing to do some investigating but if I can't prove what I find, I would just be polluting the data by entering a 'guess.'

    Posted

  • nosenabook by nosenabook in response to xairbusdriver's comment.

    I agree about polluting the data. I'm no botanist and I'm not trying to be one here.

    Elsewhere in the forums is a comment from the PTB, saying every specimen is viewed and transcribed more than once, which to my mind, lowers the stakes for each individual transcription. Do the best you can and enjoy the pretty pictures.

    Posted