# Diversity metrics display wrong number of samples

**URL:** https://forum.qiime2.org/t/diversity-metrics-display-wrong-number-of-samples/5061
**Category:** User Support
**Tags:** diversity
**Created:** [July 16, 2018, 3:25pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/diversity-metrics-display-wrong-number-of-samples/5061 "2018-07-16T15:25:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 3

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### Author: ![Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/user_avatar/forum.qiime2.org/nicholas_bokulich/32/19937_2.png) [@Nicholas\_Bokulich](https://forum.qiime2.org/u/Nicholas_Bokulich)
#### Post date: [July 16, 2018, 4:06pm UTC](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/diversity-metrics-display-wrong-number-of-samples/5061/3 "2018-07-16T16:06:53Z")

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> [@Kim\_Lam\_Chiok](#):
>
> I went back and made a different table.qzv file using the original table.qza (which is generated without association to the metadata file, right?)

Correct. Metadata are independent. You can change these any time and they will not impact your feature table! In fact, the metadata are intended to be flexible and mutable.

> [@Kim\_Lam\_Chiok](#):
>
> I noticed that my sampleID column was ignored and that the number of samples per group (Yes vs No) was not correct. See, I only have 4 individuals in “Yes” group and 6 in the “No” group. Unifrac calculated for 24 and 15, respectively.

It is the number of distances, not the number of sample. See [this post](https://forum.qiime2.org/t/how-to-interpret-beta-group-significance-results-boxplots/2091/2) (and the rest of that thread) for more detail.

> [@Kim\_Lam\_Chiok](#):
>
> In Faith and observed OTUs metrics, I do not see the depth plots and only groups (Yes and No) are shown. My original version previous to updating the metadata table showed the depth sampling for individuals too.

It sounds like you just mixed up the action you used here: before you used `alpha-rarefaction` and now you used `alpha_group_significance`, but this is not really clear from your question (sharing the old/new files would help clarify, but you can really just check the provenance in the files to make sure you used the same action and version of qiime2 to produce them)

> [@Kim\_Lam\_Chiok](#):
>
> Do I need to start over?

No! Everything I have seen so far is looking fine.

> [@Kim\_Lam\_Chiok](#):
>
> Is it safe to export data? Do my original files remain in place and unchanged after export?

Yes. Exporting creates a copy of the file. Your artifact file remains in place.

Good luck!

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