Methods
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Sunday, March 25th, 2012Like so many others in the U.S. I’ve been working on my taxes. It is that time of year. As a family historian, my mind naturally drifts to a time before TurboTax, stacks of receipts even before real tax forms. When Congress approved the first ever income tax during the American Civil War, it was [...]
You Never Know Until You Ask
Sunday, March 18th, 2012Last week I asked a cousin if she had some pictures that had belonged to her mother, my Aunt Melva, who recently passed away. My cousin’s husband said, “Oh I have those scanned and put on CD. Do you want one? I can get it to you next week.” Yes, I certainly did want one. [...]
Researching the Undead
Sunday, January 29th, 2012In a big project that I’ve been working on, there has been a large cast of supporting characters. People who weren’t goals of the research but who were necessary to the research. Now, as I work on the book that is based on that research, I’ve realized that I have left a few people hanging. [...]
The Path of Logic
Sunday, January 8th, 2012I’ve taken a bit of a holiday hiatus from writing about research. So far, I’ve written about repeatability, openness, goals, and searching the literature. Another important part of research is the logical path that connects the evidence signposts together and leads to the conclusion. Part of the research process is to pave that path and [...]
Goal!
Sunday, December 11th, 2011Another facet of research is that it starts with a goal. The goal may be fairly general. For example it might be to gather information about a certain surname in a certain area and during a certain time period. Often, though, the goal relates to a hypothesis. Goals and Hypotheses In most research a hypothesis [...]
Genealogy Literati
Sunday, December 4th, 2011Literati, (plural noun) – well-educated people who are interested in literature. One of the most important things about open research is that it makes it possible not just to check research but to avoid repeating it unknowingly. In science, no one wants to turn in a grant proposal for an experiment only to be informed [...]
Holding the Door Open
Sunday, November 27th, 2011This week, I need to start where I left off last week, with reproducibility. This week comes a facet to research that overlaps greatly with reproducibility—openness. If reproducibility is central to true research, there must be some way to see inside what someone else has done. It must be possible to understand not just the [...]
The Genealogists Friend, John Q. Tangential
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011John Q. Tangential is one of my favorite people in genealogy. He married a great-aunt or bought land next to a third cousin once removed. Then he moved west and was found in the census on the same page as another family of interest that wasn’t supposed to be related to him in any way [...]
The Hard Part is Knowing What to Leave Out
Sunday, October 9th, 2011When Steve Jobs passed away a few days ago, the news popped up on my Mac and I read his obituaries online. Somehow that seemed both natural and fitting. There were many, many angles in those obituaries. He was a CEO, technology visionary and showman but what struck me were all the mentions of his [...]
DNA—To Inherit or not to Inherit?
Sunday, September 4th, 2011To pick up where I left off last week, after discussing yDNA and mtDNA, I should go over autosomal DNA, the vast majority of our genetic material. Autosomal DNA Autosomal DNA is a very different story from yDNA and mtDNA. On the plus side, autosomal DNA covers every line of our pedigrees, not just the [...]
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