SNGF: Genealogy Database Statistics

 

Tonight's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge from Randy Seaver is:

1)  If you have your family tree research in a Genealogy Management Program (GMP), whether a computer software program or an online family tree, figure out how to find how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database.

2)  Tell us which GMP you use, and how many persons, places, sources, etc. are in your database(s) today.

 

Family Tree Maker

I use Family Tree Maker 2012 (FTM) for my genealogy research. I went to Plan > Current Tree > More to find my file statistics.

 

 

This shows me that in my database I have:

• 5,096 people
• 1,374 marriages
• 14 generations
• 1,015 surnames
• 1,911 places
• 63 sources
• 425 media

• average lifespan 57.3 years
• earliest birth date before 1555
• most recent birth date 11 March 2011

My daughter is due to have her first baby two weeks today, so that last statistic will soon change.

 

The Next Generation

I use The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding (TNG) to publish my family history online. TNG also produces database statistics. These are slightly different from FTM because I haven't synced the two programs for a couple of days.

 

 

The TNG statistics provide me with the additional information that in my database I have:

• 2,576 males (50.57%)
• 2,499 females (49.06%)
• 19 unknown gender (0.37%)
• total living 582
• total families 1,536
• average lifespan 60 years 88 days
• longest lived person 106 years

The large discrepancy in the average lifespan between FTM and TNG is surprising and I must investigate that further.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How Many Surnames?

Tonight's challenge from Randy Seaver is to:

1)  Go into your Genealogy Management Program (GMP; either software on your computer, or an online family tree) and figure out how to count how many surnames you have in your family tree database.

2)  Tell us which GMP you're using and how you did this task.

3)  Tell us how many surnames, and if possible, which surname has the most entries.  If this excites you, tell us which surnames are in the top 5!

4)  Write about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a status or comment on Facebook.

My preferred genealogy program is Family Tree Maker 2011 (FTM 2011). I used the Surname Report, found in the Publish workspace under Person Reports.

 

 

The Surname Report is a new feature in FTM 2011 and I had never used it before tonight, so I found this week's challenge particularly interesting.

From the Surname Report Options, I selected the options:

• All Individuals
• Sort by surname count
• Show divider between surnames

 

 

 

This report gave me 27 pages containing 35 surnames, plus a 28th page containing 24. (35 X 27) + 24 = 969, so I have a total of 969 surnames in my database of 4,859 people.

The most common surname in my database is my maiden name, Bentley. The table below shows the top ten surnames, including the breakdown between males and females and the earliest and most recent dates for each surname: