You can't always count on the family trees - you have to use Ancestry for original documents like censuses and birth and death certificates. Kathy From: hesse-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:hesse-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of jwr184@aol.com Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 11:48 AM To: hesse@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [HESSE] Jumping to conclusions Also be very CAREFUL when using Ancestry. More and more garbage shows up every day. JWR Do Not Trust Family Oral History !!!!!!!!!!!!!! -----Original Message----- From: Raymond F. Gunther <raygun33@optonline.net> To: hesse <hesse@rootsweb.com> Sent: Mon, Mar 14, 2011 2:07 pm Subject: Re: [HESSE] Jumping to conclusions Do Not Trust Family Oral History !!!!!!!!!!!!!! ---- Original Message ----- rom: "Charles Hofacker" <chofack@gmail.com> o: <hesse@rootsweb.com> ent: Monday, March 14, 2011 11:12 AM ubject: Re: [HESSE] Jumping to conclusions Hi all -- I would second Pat's answer. Explore but then keep the results tagged as tentative or exploratory until a more definitive result emerges. In the meantime you might help someone else. While on this general topic of jumping to conclusions, when I am not investigating family roots in Hesse, in my other life I do statistical stuff. I have been looking in vain for books or articles on how to apply statistical or mathematical reasoning to questions like these. In my own case, I call it the 'Francis Hofacker' problem. My great-great grand uncle Killian Hofacker migrated to Carbon County, PA, from Salmunster, a town east of Frankfurt. My family was well acquainted with this fact, but I have recently discovered that a certain Francis Hofacker lived about a mile and a half from Killian. So is this a coincidence or were they related? Has anyone run into any technical or mathematical writings on assessing these sorts of questions? Mostly what I see is the conservative ideal to not jump to conclusions unless you are absolutely certain, which I interpret to mean that the probability of you being wrong when you say person X is related is "small" and the probability that you are correct is "large". I have not seen any tools that help you calculate these probabilities or advice as to how to approach the problem of doing such calculations. Anyone with mathematical or computational interests should feel free to email me for a draft spreadsheet I have worked up to help me decide the question. __________________________________________________________________ Charles Hofacker: My <http://myweb.fsu.edu/chofacker> FSU<http://myweb.fsu.edu/chofacker> Page <http://myweb.fsu.edu/chofacker> | Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/chofack> | Delicious <http://www.delicious.com/chofack> | Twitter<http://twitter.com/chofack> <http://twitter.com/chofack> ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to HESSE-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message _____ No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 10.0.1204 / Virus Database: 1498/3506 - Release Date: 03/14/11