October 2015 checking stats

In October, we checked 40 soldiers under our new system. I've reviewed all of the checks, and I've come up with categories of errors. I've tallied the number of errors. I recognize that some of the "errors" were judgment calls. Sometimes, words are just really difficult to read. Sometimes a family is just difficult or Ancestry is acting up. Every person had errors, and there is always room for improvement. Here are the categories, their definitions, and the total number of errors for each category.

GRID Errors

• MILIN?/MAR? - Forgot to mark the column - 8
• Missing HH member - Forgot to add a person from the manuscript to the Grid - 4
• Duplicate people - An individual was included on the Grid multiple times - 2
• Wrong person - An incorrect person was added to the Grid - 1

Inferred Relationships

• Incorrect relationships - This is an incorrect inferred relationship (do not confuse it with the relationships on the manuscript) - 1

Census Errors

• Name - The name was not changed to match the manuscript - 46
• Typo/Reading/Wrong - This is a typo, a reading error, or some other way that data was entered incorrectly - 85
• State Code - The state or country code was entered incorrectly - 3
• Missing/Wrong URL - The URL for the census manuscript is missing or incorrect - 0 (yippee!)
• Missing data - A field that had information on the manuscript was not entered in the screens - 35
• Additional finds - The checker was able to find decades the original inputter missed (Some inputters sent soldiers they had difficulty with out for checks. That is fine. You can see by this number, that checking helped improve the data.) - 58
• Quality Code - The quality code is incorrect - 16

Death Errors

• Typo/Reading/Wrong - This is a typo, a reading error, or some other way that data was entered incorrectly - 8
• Missing data - A field that had information on the death record was not entered in the screens - 13
• Missing/Wrong URL/Source - The URL or death source is missing or incorrect - 11
• Quality Code - The quality code is incorrect - 9
• Additional finds - The checker was able to find death information the original inputter missed - 22

Tree Errors

• Missing/Incorrect information/relationships - There is wrong information on the tree or you did not include on your tree information that you entered into the screens or that you otherwise used to do the work. This does not include saving all those relationships in the early decades that aren't marked on the manuscript. - 16

The total number of errors for all 40 soldiers is 338. Some errors affect the data more than others. If we checked other pensions, we'd probably find similar errors. To put this in perspective, (provided I did the math correctly) at this rate, the total number of errors for all of Project 1 would be 71,825. Of course we corrected the 338 errors. We plan on checking and correcting about 10% of the sample. This means we will correct about 7,183 errors. At the end of the sample, we will still have 64,642 errors in the data. 

Thank you all for taking this so seriously. Let's set a goal to reduce our errors in November.