With respect I am far from confused about Q dates, I have been using the GRO indexes for far longer than I care to think, and much longer than the Q dates have existed. Indeed, I remember them being introduced into Legacy. I did not like them then, and still don’t!
With regard to the actual date of registration, *which is what a Q Date allocates to a specific quarter*, your calculation is invalid and in my view adds nothing to the accuracy of the useless exercise of trying to allocate a date to a BMD - for example one has 8 weeks to register a DOB, and before 1875 it was not even compulsory. BTW. I am qualified in probability theory. At no stage in its compilation does the GRO index include any indication whatsoever of the actual date of the BMD. Whilst you mother's birth (December) appeared in the March returns, all this says is that instead of registering the birth there and then, as could have been done, they waited until the following year. At best, as you originally, and correctly, indicated one can only say that a BMD probably happened at about the time of registration , but not later than the last month, and in my view any further attempt to refine the date is invalid. I am sticking to my previous comment. Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ From: [email protected] Sent: Monday, April 09, 2012 4:22 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] What is the point of Family Search 2? Ron, I did not indicate a range beyond pointing out that it is always more than a quarter and may not be accurate to the year. My point was that the Q format is intrinsically not an event date, and using it as such produces errors, as when translated to nFS data. I then derived the best date estimation based on Q format data, which is the month and year of the first month of the quarter. As an example, my mother's birth was in late December, so appears in the Mar Quarter GRO record for the following year - off by one in years and three in months if simply entered to nFS as the record designation data. Because of the systematic effect of recording lag, it's always most accurate to use the start of the GRO quarter as a date estimation, with qualifier to clearly indicate approximation. For a source, of course the designation by the GRO is correct, but if you are now confused by use of the Q format as a date, consider how a user of nFS data will get on with a potentially erroneous month and year presented as fact. kb From: "Ron Ferguson" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, April 9, 2012 9:38:22 AM Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] What is the point of Family Search 2? Of course, the only Event which the Q Date refers is that of the Registration of the BMD, which, for births, can be of a larger range than that which you indicate. The most appropriate date for the record is that which is used by convention, and more importantly by the General Records Office to reference the record, is the last month of the quarter, ie. March, June, September, December. Ron Ferguson http://www.fergys.co.uk/ From: [email protected] Sent: Monday, April 09, 2012 1:55 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [LegacyUG] What is the point of Family Search 2? The Q format is not does not give the date of a vital event; it gives the group identification of a record. Properly, it should be used as a source, not a date. Since it gives the time period the event was recorded, the best date approximation is "about the first month of the Q period". All Q periods will include events preceding the Quarter, and in the preceding year for the Mar quarter, and will miss events close to the Quarter end, again resulting in a year error for the Dec Quarter. "abt. month year" is the closest approximation for an estimated date and indicates that it is estimated. kb Legacy User Group guidelines: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Etiquette.asp Archived messages after Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Archived messages from old mail server - before Nov. 21 2009: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Online technical support: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/Help.asp Follow Legacy on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/LegacyFamilyTree) and on our blog (http://news.LegacyFamilyTree.com). To unsubscribe: http://www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/LegacyLists.asp
