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jessica hekman.Research update:
Last week I reported that I had been making sure that we had most dogs’ ages as actual numbers that I could use in research. This week I started using those ages.
A few weeks ago I had done a test to see if Labrador Retrievers were statistically different on any of our survey questions compared to other purebreds. (I left mutts out of this one, because some mutts may have some lab in them, which might confuse the issue.) At the time, I realized that it’s important to compare labs to other dogs of the same size (and luckily we have size information on about half our dogs, from one of the later surveys). But then I realized that we should also compare labs to other dogs of the same age.
So today I put together a list of labs for whom I knew size and age (254 of them). And for each lab I found a matching dog of another breed that is the same size and roughly the same age. (A few people had marked their labs as “ankle height” which I thought MUST be a mistake, so I dropped those from the analysis.) What’s cool is that since we have such a huge number of dogs of other breeds to compare labs to, I can match ages very closely! Remember these ages are calculated sometimes based on birthdate. But I have a lab age 0.85 years matched to a dog age 0.86 years. 3.87 years matched to 3.88 years. And so forth. I love having this big data set to work with.
I haven’t run the tests yet – that’s my next task.
As always – answering more questions really, really helps us. I know a lot of what we talk about is the DNA analysis, but there’s lots to learn just from the survey questions. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s filled them out!
Jessica Hekman
postdoc, Karlsson Lab
Very cool.
This is all so fascinating! I love that you post about it! Thank you for sharing with us!
Thanks, Kristen! I’m really glad folks are enjoying the updates. This helps incentivize me to post another one today – it’s on my list to do, anyways!
Well I do read them all. I enjoy it. I feel dumb responding to each one saying “Wow. Fascinating. Thanks for sharing!” But I do want you to know that at least one person is reading and enjoying. Lol. I’m truly fascinated with all of it!
Definitely thank you for letting me know! It’s really nice to know they’re not just going out into a void 🙂
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