Age at First Marriage

[Bob Emnett]

For a recent family reunion, I generated statistics (List-->Statistics-->Marked People ...) from my Reunion family file. Among those numbers is "age at first marriage." I did not carefully review the stats for reasonableness. When a cousin asked which male first married at age 61 and which female first married at age 50, I looked at the database. In each case, the individual was not a direct relation and had been married before marrying into the family. However, I did not have a date for either previous marriage; so, Reunion could only calculate from the known dates. I found at least one other such case that did not affect the stats.

I tried putting "bef xxxx" in the date field of one of the previous marriages - using a year significantly earlier than the subsequent marriage into the family. However, that did not change the stats; so the "before" is apparently not accounted for in the Stats algorithm.

Does anyone have a suggestion of how to handle this to make the stats work without entering patently false information?

TIA

[TeriPettit]

Re: Age at First Marriage

I can't tell from your description what you consider to be wrong, and what results you want.

Are you wanting to get someone's age at their first marriage to a marked spouse, rather than their first marriage to anyone?

[Bob Emnett]

Re: Age at First Marriage

I can't tell from your description what you consider to be wrong, and what results you want.

Are you wanting to get someone's age at their first marriage to a marked spouse, rather than their first marriage to anyone?

Teri,
Guess I wasn't clear! I'll take an example. "Sam" married my cousin "Jean" at age 61. The stats identified the maximum male Age at First Marriage of all the marked people as 61. A simple find query identified Sam as the only such person. However, ... Sam was married previously ... and I did/do not have the date of his initial marriage. I know it was likely before 1972 as he had a child born then; but even putting "bef 1972" as the date of his previous marriage did not change the Reunion-generated Stats.

Unless the Stats algorithm can take dates with "bef," "aft," and similar 'approximations' into account; I don't see it giving better info based on current configurations (program and data). So, what I was asking for was any suggestions for how to get better stats. I know if I just put "1972" into the date of Sam's first marriage, he will look much younger for the stats. However, I am reluctant to do that sort of thing as keeping track of where I "lied" to the database for the sake of statistics would be nearly impossible.

[TeriPettit]

Re: Age at First Marriage

I don't think the date approximation is the source of the problem you're having, assuming that you have indeed entered "before 1972" for the date of your relative's other marriage, and you want it to be calculated as if it were 1972. I'm pretty sure that for calculating ages at life events, "before x", "after x", and "about x" are all treated the same as just x. (There is a Preference to ignore approximate dates when doing feasibility checking; this may affect the "age at event" attributes as well - I haven't tested that.)

What is more likely the problem is that you haven't sorted Sam's marriages. Reunion doesn't auto-sort the spouses (or the children) when generating the Age at First Marriage and Age at First Child attributes. The "first" marriage is the one that appears at the top of the spouse popup menu when you mouse down on the spouses list; the "first" child is child #1.

So if someone's spouses are listed out of date order, the "age at first marriage" will not be the earliest in date order.

[Bob Emnett]

Re: Age at First Marriage

I don't think the date approximation is the source of the problem you're having, assuming that you have indeed entered "before 1972" for the date of your relative's other marriage, and you want it to be calculated as if it were 1972. I'm pretty sure that for calculating ages at life events, "before x", "after x", and "about x" are all treated the same as just x. (There is a Preference to ignore approximate dates when doing feasibility checking; this may affect the "age at event" attributes as well - I haven't tested that.)

What is more likely the problem is that you haven't sorted Sam's marriages. Reunion doesn't auto-sort the spouses (or the children) when generating the Age at First Marriage and Age at First Child attributes. The "first" marriage is the one that appears at the top of the spouse popup menu when you mouse down on the spouses list; the "first" child is child #1.

So if someone's spouses are listed out of date order, the "age at first marriage" will not be the earliest in date order.

Teri,
So right you are. I checked Sam and the first marriage in order was the one at his age 61. Changing the sort changed the stats w/o even needing an approximation date.

Thanks. Now I guess I have some other marriages to check!