Previous FAQ: The Mathematics of Family
One thing that should be quickly apparent based on the shear number of one’s ancestors, is that labeling schemes such as “Great-Grandfather” is woefully insufficient. After all, I have four of them. One solution would be the use of “M” and “F” labels such as “MFM”. But even this approach is instantly ambiguous. Does “M” represent “male” or “mother”? Is “F” “female” or “father“? Not brain surgery, but is “MFM” your paternal-grandmother’s father, or your maternal-grandfather’s mother? The choice makes quite a difference, but you only need to know choice was made. As it happens, when I first started my tree, I arbitrarily selected “M” for “male” and “F” for “female”.
The second issue regarding the simplified labeling of ancestors is compression. The difference between person MMMMMMMF and MMMMMMMMF is hard to see. Strings of like-genders can be compressed into “Mn” (or “Fn“) format, where n represents the number of times a particular gender is repeated. The cited pair above become “M7F” and “M8F” respectively, which may be easier to deal with.
Next FAQ: Ancestors vs Descendants, or Bottom-up vs Top-Down
Sang Roial 