Ancestor Listmaker - ahnentafel list added

Question

I just uploaded a revised version of Ancestor Listmaker that includes a list of all ancestors with their generation back and their ahnentafel number. The ahnentafel numbers are currently only on an "all ancestors" list, but I am considering making it a display option for all the lists. Please let me know if that would be desirable. The app is still at https://apps.wikitree.com/apps/ashley1950/index.html and can now also be found on the WikiTree apps page at: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Apps

A few observations from adding ahnentafel numbers:

• If you are descended from the same ancestor through multiple lines, your list will have multiple entries for the same ancestor with different ahnentafel numbers. If you go far enough back, you may find that the same ancestor is included dozens of times, indicating that you are descended from that same ancestor through dozens of separate lines. This shows pedigree collapse. A good way to see this is to sort the ahnentafel list by Birth Date.
• If you are descended from the same person through multiple different lines, you may find that some of those duplicates are from different generations, including generations beyond the generation setting you selected. This occurs if the ancestor is both in the generation you selected through one line and in earlier generations through other lines. 
• If you go far enough back, the ahnentafel numbers get quite huge. On the one hand, this is not surprising, since the number of one's ancestors (and hence the ahnentafel numbers) go up by a power of 2 each generation. Still, it is somewhat shocking to see ahnentafel numbers in the tens of millions. Good luck researching all of them! 

Besides the ahnentafel list, I added a few other list types over the past few days, including Australian Immigrants, Canadian Immigrants, and Native Americans. 

Comments

It seems private and unlisted profiles cause a problem.

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Steve - Since the app needs to "see" the Descendant's family tree on WikiTree, it currently does not work with profiles whose privacy level is set to Unlisted, Private, or Private with Public Biography. It only works with profiles whose privacy level is set to Private with Public Family Tree, Private with Public Biography and Family Tree, Public, or Open.

I have it on my todo list to add the ability for people to enter their sign-in information, which should allow the app to work for profiles with privacy levels set to Unlisted, Private, or Private with Public Biography so long as the person signing in is on the Trusted List.

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A bug report -- it works up to 10 generations, but after I get to 11 everyone on my mother's side shows NaN--1 for the number. My mother's profile is unlisted, which is probably causing the issue.

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@Jamie - Yes, it's because your mother is Unlisted. It's not about the # of generations; it's your mother's entire side. Someone else noted the problem. The ahnentafel algorithm calculates an ancestor's ahnentafel number based on the ahnentafel of their child. In order to do that, the app needs to "find" the object for their child. The app does that by looking for an object whose Father or Mother attribute is the same as the ancestor's Id attribute. However, since the Father and Mother attribute's of your mother's object is -5 (or something other than their real Id's), the algorithm never finds her and can't calculate your maternal grandparent's ahnentafel numbers. The app can find the children of earlier ancestors on your mother's side, but their children don't have correctly calculated ahnentafel numbers, because your mother didn't get one, so the problem gets propagated all the way back through her line.

I am assuming the solution is for me to add the ability to login. If the user was logged in through my app, would that fix it - eg if you were logged in, would the info for your mother that is retrieved by getAncestors include the Id's of her parents rather than just -5?

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The -5 isn't the actual ID, but it should be able to be used to link the parent and child. My profile should return something like Mother: -5, and there should be a placeholder person in the list of Ancestors with an ID of -5, and if that placeholder person's parents aren't private they will be the actual IDs.

But logging in would let the user get IDs of private people they are on the Trusted List for.

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@Jamie - You were right. The problem was because I deleted private profiles from the array of ancestor objects early on in the program. I changed it so that the private profiles are retained long enough so they are available to calculate the ahnentafel numbers. I uploaded a new version, which should work for you.

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Yep, it's working great now!

Answer 1

Thank you! This is a great addition.

Answer 2

This is great.  Only problem was opening the export in Excel automatically converts the the 1st 6 generations to look like a date, changing them to text changes them to a 5 digit number.  I haven't figured out how to get around this, other than manually correcting each one.

Comments

I added it to Google Drive and I don't have that problem now.  I found if I sort the report by birthdate or something else, I can't get it back to the Ahnen number, because the 'generation' is only 1 one digit number.

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I picked up an increase of almost 400 people so those must be the duplicated records for different relationships.  Those will be interesting to review.

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Re date conversion when imported to Excel - On my version of Excel, when you import a csv file, you have the option to specify what the data type of each column is. By default, the selection is General, which can turn numbers into dates. When I specified Text for the Gen-Ahnen column, the data was imported without being converted to dates.

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Unfortunately, Excel will open automatically when a csv file is selected on my computer, so no options are given during conversion.  General is the default for that column when Excel is opened, but once it was opened, changing to Text changed it to all numbers unfortunately.  Opening it in Google Drive seems to solve the issue, so I can use that instead.

Answer 3

Thanks so much Chase for quickly modifying the app to list the generation and ahnentafel numbers. This listing is what I have been wanting for a long time. I started to compile it manually but it just didn't seem feasible knowing that a program could be written to produce it within seconds. Today marks the first time in 20 years that I have been able to generate a report that I wanted from data that I have entered online (or someone else has entered).  Also, I can download the data and load it in a spreadsheet program and print it out without much effort. Congratulations to WikiTree and the Ancestor Listmaker app.

The ability to generate reports from the data that exists on WikiTree adds much value to WikiTree. This is a marketable feature that should not go unnoticed.

Comments

Great. Very happy it helped you.

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I agree, having this column added is a very nice addition!!

Answer 4

What's not to love about it?