How You can Help Yourself to Taste Success!

[Tim]

Doh, how did I get that so wrong?

 

[Britjan]

I am having a knee operation next Wednesday and will be off work for 4 - 6 weeks so guess what I will be doing.............

Well I think if you spend a few days in hospital or an hour or so waiting somewhere else it's a perfect place to bump into a "lost cousin" . Once you're post-op I'm sure you'll find some time where you will get into conversation with near strangers to relieve the boredom.

 

[GillW]

Derrr, Tim....my family history research!!!!

All the best for your op.
I guess Tim was half right - you may have one foot up to rest your knee - while doing your FH research.

 

[Britjan]

I notice there is a new feature that lets me see where I have made a contribution to a thread I am following like this one. Great idea but I also noticed that when some of these new forum ideas started off we were a bit stingy with our "smilies" and Likes etc. I've gone back several months in some cases to early days even prior to joining to add this simple gesture of support and will try to remember to do it from now on. Naturally we don't want to clutter up the forum with one or two word posts but we've been given the perfect tool, so as more join the forum I'd like them to feel they were contributing to the "taste of success" etc.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 52 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 5,751 new entries have been added and
• 191 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing.
This is what I said last week, "Peter's great piece in his last newsletter I'm sure will revitalise some people into checking and adding some more ancestor to Lost Cousins. And when people discover how easy FTAnalyzer is to install and use, I'm sure we will see lots more entries in the coming weeks." Wow, that certainly happened! Check these results! Our highest number of new entries added and our highest number of new matches!!
Amazing work everyone.

 

[peter]

Just to add to what Red Dragon has said, the number of relatives entered in August and the number of matches made were the highest in any month for over a year. If we can do that in summer, just think what we can do in the middle of an English winter!

 

[Tim]

Peter, I think this just goes to show what an impact your Newsletter has.

I realise it must take a huge amount of work to produce and I thank you for it.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 49 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 5,609 new entries have been added and
• 296 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing.
2nd week running we've had over 5,600 new entries added, and this weeks relatives matched of 296 is the highest since I started recording the figures.

This looks to be continuing to build on last weeks success, so well done everybody, Great Job!

 

[Liberty]

I'm not sure of the maths involved, but does this increasing number of matches suggest we are reaching some significant number? Is it like the old problem of 'how many socks do you have to pull out of the drawer before you have a pair?' At some point we must have so many cousins entered that matches become more likely than not. There's a 'Birthday problem' where the answer is that that you only need 23 people for it to be more likely than not that two of them have the same birthday - have we reache the equivalent for cousins?

 

[Tim]

Hi Liberty,

That would be great, wouldn't it? To be at that point where every person in the 1881 census had been added at least once. And when anybody then joined, they would have to match with someone already a member.
To quote from the very 1st post.

Peter has mentioned that's there's over 90,000 members of LostCousins. So if each of us just added 100 people from the 1881 census (which is free to view), that would be 9,000,000 names. Because the population of the 1881 census was only 29,707,207 you will see that we would have entered a 1/3 of the number of people in the census, so how many matches would that give you?

I found entering a household was really easy, select the "Add a new Household" from the Search screen, select which Census, and add 7 bits of information. Adding the remaining people in the household is even easier! You only need to add 4 bits of information. I was finding that adding a new household of 5 people was taking about 2 minutes. So to get to that magic number of 100 ancestors added by each of us, would take less than an hour.

Now how's that for a great return on your time?

The moral really is, the more we add the more likely we are to match.

Every household we add gets us to that point where making matches becomes almost a certainty of matching with someone else.

Lets keep adding!!

 

[Alexander Bisset]

It would be interesting if Peter was able to produce some stats on numbers entered for 1881 perhaps by County?

 

[Tim]

I was thinking something similar. It would be quite interesting to see which areas had been added and how many.

 

[peter]

I don't have figures by county, but I can tell you that the coverage of England is better than for both Wales and Scotland. In the case of Scotland it's because the 1881 Census isn't free online as it is for England & Wales, in the case of Wales it's because it's much more difficult to identify the right people on the census, which means that fewer relatives from collateral lines have been entered.

The analogy with the birthday problem is a good one - I use a similar calculation to calculate the Match Potential. However whilst you might only need 23 people in a room for there to be a better than even chance of 2 people having the same birthday, remember that there are still 21 people in the room whose birthday doesn't match any of the others.

As Red Dragon pointed out, in the post that Tim quoted earlier, we don't need to persuade new people to join LostCousins in order to get the snowball rolling, we only need to encourage the existing members to do what we have done. And that's where the forum comes in!

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 49 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 3,406 new entries have been added and
• 183 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing.
So a drop in new entries this week and a corresponding drop in new matches. However, this weeks new matches is still the 3rd highest since recording began. And so this is the second week running where the ratio of new entries to matches is about 18.

Basically, every 18th person added is getting a match to someone else.

So come on everybody! The nights are drawing in in the Northern Hemisphere, and its getting wet and cold and miserable

But hey!! That means its the ideal time to enter our ancestors at Lost Cousins!!

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 46 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 5,106 new entries have been added and
• 231 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing. Another good week for new entries and new matches.
It's lovely to see the graph reflecting what I keep saying, the more you enter the more likely you are to make a match. Good Luck everybody!

 

[Carla]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 46 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 5,106 new entries have been added and
• 231 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing. Another good week for new entries and new matches.

It's lovely to see the graph reflecting what I keep saying, the more you enter the more likely you are to make a match. Good Luck everybody!

Well I keep adding relatives bit by bit, and had two new matches in the last few weeks, although neither are for direct ancestors. I have been able to find out some bits of information that will help me from one kind 'cousin' who has also shared copies of certificates today with me. . I am still waiting for a repy from the other person but it has only just been over a week and a bit so i will leave it a bit longer.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 29 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 2,358 new entries have been added and
• 68 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing.
A small downturn in numbers this week, but that does happen. Perhaps people are discovering the joys of FTAnalyzer and correcting their data, which in turn will lead to new people to add to Lost Cousins. Good luck everyone!

 

[Alexander Bisset]

The new versions of FTAnalyzer should make it easier to see gaps in your data and where you can add more relatives. The colour charts have been updated and extra means of detecting if you've entered census facts have been added so you can see who needs to be entered to Lost Cousins even easier. So if you haven't used the program recently you should check out the new version.

Coming soon :-

• A timeline map to see all your ancestors on a Google Map by the year.
• Merged Ancestry.co* facts will show the piece/folio/ed etc info that they tag and is used in the Lost Cousins website. Thus making it even easier to enter data to Lost Cousins.
• A video on how to use FT Analyzer to enter data onto Lost Cousins.

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 52 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 2,246 new entries have been added and
• 86 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing.
Not much change this week, a small increase in new matches. The new entries to relatives matched ratio is about 26, which is still better than average. Good luck everyone!

 

[Red Dragon]

Hi Everyone!

Here's a weekly update on how well people have been doing over at LostCousins.

• 44 new members joined the LostCousins site
• 2,796 new entries have been added and
• 161 relatives have been matched.

Here's a graph that shows the progress and how well everyone is doing.
Not much change this week, but still a large increase in new matches! The new entries to relatives matched ratio is about 17, so every 17th person added made a match! Well done everyone!