Comments on: How big data helps Ancestry.com map people, places and time

By: J

Thu, 09 Aug 2012 22:10:07 +0000

One must keep in mind that not only are there errors in the online family trees, but also in the records used to make them. Though I truly like the automation of trees and data, I am very careful to verify the data before attaching and I rarely allow a tree to become public precisely because of the error factor.

Automation has lead unfortunately to what a scientist would call bad science. Attach, attach, attach and publish should be changed to verify, verify, verify. Alas, too many want instant gratification.

By: Clareita

Clareita — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 20:55:22 +0000

Maybe Charlemagne, but not Henry VIII since he has no descendants.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:43:51 +0000

LOL.

By: Alice_Crain

Alice_Crain — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:17:52 +0000

On the bright side, though, one day we may ALL be descended from Henry VIII and Charlemagne! ;)

By: Alice_Crain

Alice_Crain — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 05:12:03 +0000

If I spend 2 hours watching a PBS Civil War documentary on Netflix, or plunk down $20 on Battle Cry of Freedom at Amazon, it would indeed be a fair assumption to conclude that I am interested in the Civil War.

But if I attach a Social Security Death Index to Katherine Compton in my family tree… because the name matches, and I’m excited to suddenly “know” her dates of birth and death, and, hey, the Ancestry hints are telling me that other users have attached the same SSDI to their Katherine Compton too… does that make my choice to attach the record a fair assumption with regard to historical fact? No. It does not.

*IF* Ancestry’s users were all painstakingly careful, deliberate, well-reasoned constructors of family trees, then Mr. Sorenson’s model would make sense. But they are not. Ken Piper (in the comment below) is right. Ancestry’s user-submitted trees are rife with inaccuracies.

To answer your question – the only way I can think of to solve this problem is to leave user choices out of the algorithm altogether.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:02:29 +0000

That’s a good point, although how would you solve it to account for poor judgment? It seems like a fair assumption when building a model that user behavior is determinative of accuracy.

By: Ken Piper

Ken Piper — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 22:37:04 +0000

I agree that I worry about user judgement. Aside from record images, the bulk of “data” on Ancestry is submitted family trees with a horrible record of accuracy. I have given up fighting the wave of citations pointing to other users as a record. The inaccuracies become “fact” and when you truly find the correct fact you are drowned out by the glut of bad data. It will only get worse.

By: Alice_Crain

Alice_Crain — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:28:49 +0000

Unfortunately, user judgment is not always sound, and Mr. Sorenson’s algorithm mucks up the search engine precisely because it “learns” from those user choices.

Big Data? As the algorithm incorporates inaccuracies, and then prompts more people to confirm those “judgments” in making choices of their own… Big Bad Data is what it becomes.