how_many: Assistance with choosing ID scheme parameters

In rabi: Generate Codes to Uniquely and Robustly Identify Individuals for Animal Behavior Studies

Description

Displays the maximum number of unique and robust IDs possible given various combinations of parameters used in the rabi package. Several tables, centered around the supplied inputs or the default values, are printed to help the user choose which set of physical parameters would be most useful in their study. This is based on the equation:

max # of IDs = alphabet^(total.length - redundancy)

Usage

how_many(total.length = 5, redundancy = 2, alphabet = 6)

Arguments

total.length	the desired number (or estimation) of unique positions to be marked on the animal. (This can be thought of as the total number of positions on which color bands or paint marks will be applied.)
redundancy	the desired number (or estimation) of erasures that can occur without disrupting surety of unique identification. This value determines how robust the scheme is to erasures.
alphabet	an integer representing the desired (or estimated) 'alphabet size.' This is the number of unique markings (think different paint colors, symbols, or varieties of bands) at your disposal.

Note

The rs_IDs function generates codes that have the maximum number of unique IDs; these are the theoretical values listed in the tables. However, rs_IDs has several restrictions on the parameter combinations it can accept. Asterisks ('*') are used in the table to indicate which values are a result of such illegal combinations. Other functions such as brute_IDs or simple_IDs can be used generate schemes from those particular parameter combinations, but they may fail to achieve the theoretical maximums listed in the table.

Author(s)

Andrew Burchill, [e-mail]

References

Burchill, A. T., & Pavlic, T. P. (2019). Dude, where's my mark? Creating robust animal identification schemes informed by communication theory. Animal Behaviour, 154, 203-208. doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.05.013

See Also

how_robust.

Examples

 #Let's generate some tables to see the number of unique IDs we could get given:
total.length <- 4  #we have ~4 positions to mark,
redundancy <- 1    #we're interested in being robust to a single erasure,
alphabet <- 5      #and we currently have 5 types of color bands in stock

how_many(total.length, redundancy, alphabet)

rabi documentation built on Dec. 10, 2019, 1:08 a.m.