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Frequently asked questions:
What is My Family Tree?
How do I navigate the tree?
Where does the information on this site come from?
How do I add new information?
How do I sign up?
What if I find a mistake?
Can I print out a tree that looks nice?
How do I recommend an improvement for the site?
How do you calculate "mean distance"?
Can My Family Tree tell me my Erdos number?
Are there other sites or resources like this?


What is My Family Tree?
Your Personal Family Tree is a free, volunteer-run website designed to help you track your academic genealogy. Our goal is to collect information about the graduate student and postdoctoral connections between most researchers in the field.

How do I navigate the tree?
There are several ways to wander around My Family Tree. The basics are summed up in the commands at the top of each page:

To see more detailed information about an individual, click "Info" next to their name in the tree or on the browse page.

Where does the information on this site come from?
Data in the tree is provided largely by visitors to the site (like you!). A group of volunteer editors works to keep the data accurate, and we hope all contributors will do the same. Contact the site administrator if you're interested in helping out with editing.

How do I add new information?
Sign up for an account. Then you will be able to contribute information to the site. To add a new person, click "New Person" on the top naviation bar. To add a new connection to an existing person, click "New Child" or "New Parent" on their info page.

How do I sign up?
Click here to sign up for a new account. You will have to provide a username and a password. This will give you permission to add new information.

What if I find a mistake?
Try to fix it yourself. If you can't do it, tell us! Click on a "report error" link and send us an email with the relevant info. We'll fix it eventually.

Can I print out a tree that looks nice?
Print quality varies with browsers. We have had decent luck with Firefox. Hopefully someday we will develop a cleaner system for printing. In the mean time, this is what works best:

  1. Click to the desired tree page
  2. Choose the smallest size from the display options.
  3. Go to the browser page setup/print options window and choose a) landscape, b) shrink page to fit, c) margins as small as possible and d) print background colors and images
  4. Try printing. If you want to get rid of the headers, print to a pdf and edit them out.
Please let us know if you figure out a way to print that works better.

How do I recommend an improvement for the site?
Send an email to admin at neurotree.org.

How do you calculate "mean distance"?
D(a)=1/(mean(1/d(a,b)))
where d(a,b) is the number of steps between people a and b. Averaging the inverse distance allows us to include unlinked people (d(a,b)=infinity) in the calculation. An analysis of mean distance for the whole tree can be found here.

Can My Family Tree tell me my Erdos number?
No. The Erdos number is based on coauthored publications. Links in this tree are based on mentorship relationships. These include graduate students, research assistants, and post-docs. Although students and their mentors often co-publish, there is not a strict relationship between the two. If you are interested in calculating your Erdos number, a good place to begin is here: http://www-users.med.cornell.edu/~jdvicto/erdos.html.

Are there other sites or resources like this?
My Family Tree runs on software developed for Neurotree, the academic family tree of neuroscience. We hope eventually to merge tree from several disciplines into a single larger scale genealogy project at academictree.org. If you are interested in developing a tree for another field, please contact us at admin at neurotree.org!

Elsewhere on the internet, we have located some similar projects, both large and small:

If you know of any other relevant links, let us know, and we'll add them to the list!


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