Summations Only

Dredge writes:

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Okay. It's been a very long time since I studied statistics but it seems weird to me that these predictions can be made without knowing the totlal size of the electorate. My fragile, egg-shell mind has a great of trouble dealing with that. Someone somewhere better be able to provide a mathematical proof for such a freaky fact, otherwise there's going to be hell to pay.

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Why do I get the feeling that you never actually studied statistics?Sample size = Where Z is the Z-score for your confidence level (do you need to be shown how to calculate this...do you know that you can simply look it up?), σ is the standard deviation, and E is the margin of error. You will note that the population size isn't included for it isn't truly important. It might make a difference for small populations, but that only serves to drive down the sample size. If you only have 100 people in the population, the sample size isn't as large. But if the population is in the millions, your sample size will only be in the hundreds.For example, a confidence level of 95% with a standard deviation of 0.5 and a margin of error of 5%, your sample size is only 385. With a margin of error of 3%, it's only 1067. Shoot for a 99% confidence with a 3% margin of error, you only need 1843.Now, let's see if you really did study statistics: What assumption has been made regarding this sample?

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Anyhow, I would imagine a statistical analysis of fossils would be much more complicated and prone to uncertainties than the statistical analysis of an election.

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Nope. Different, yes, but not "much more complicated and prone to uncertainties." In fact, archaeological evidence is much more solid than for an election: We have no way to track a vote to an individual so we can only go by self-reporting through exit polls. With archaeological evidence, we have the fossil right in front of us.

Faith writes:

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How are the traces of those living things in any way evidence of the notion that they lived in a particular time period? That's the problem.

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You're making a trifle. You know, that dessert where you layer fruit, sponge cake, and custard in a bowl.Suppose you wanted the second layer to be strawberries and kiwi fruit. But, you realize after layer five that you only put strawberries down on the second layer.How are you going to get the kiwi fruit into the second layer when there are three layers on top of it?Or suppose you're going the other way...you had strawberries and kiwi fruit in the second layer but you realize you wanted all the kiwi fruit to be up on layer seven.You're going to have to disturb the top three layers. In fact, you're going to have to do a massive deconstruction of all the top layers in order to do it. You'll have to pretty much start from scratch because the custard is certainly going to leave stains on the side of the bowl, the cake is going to leave crumbs, and if anybody really examines things, they're going to see that it's been disturbed. No, you're either going to have to live with the fact that the second layer is just strawberries or chuck the whole thing and start all over.That's how we know that the fossils we see in the strata lived at the time the strata was formed: The only way they could get into those layers is to be there at the time of the layer. Otherwise, all the layers above it would have to be wiped away in order to get those organisms into the layer and start over from scratch with the other layers.In order for organisms from, say, the Paleogene to show up in, say, the Permian, or the other way around, you're going to have to disturb all the layers in between in order to move them.

Faith writes:

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Extra alleles are the result of mutations that are mostly deleterious

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No, Faith. They are mostly neutral. Most mutations have little change in the fitness of an organism.

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Those many "alleles" which are really just mutations, most of which are deleterious, are also mostly on their way to becoming junk DNA for that reason, which is therefore actually a reduction in genetic diversity rather than an increase .

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Completely backwards. Well, except for the statement that the alleles (why the sneer quotes?) are mutations. Because that's precisely right. Alleles are mutations of a gene.Since they are mostly neutral, they spread throughout the population in a process known as "drift." They don't become "junk DNA" because they actually code for protein and are expressed. That's why people with the allele for A blood don't die just as the people with the allele for B blood don't die. Interestingly, the O allele is a frameshift mutation of the ABO gene. Because the frameshift results in a different protein being made, the rest of the process that creates the antigens known as A and B doesn't follow through (kinda like how humans can't synthesize vitamin C even though most other mammals can...we have all the machinery to do it if only the GLO gene weren't broken in humans...but notice, this still isn't a deleterious mutation as humans take in sufficient vitamin C in our diet to prevent any negative effects.) And interestingly enough, it isn't "junk DNA" nor does it cause people to die.In fact, there are six alleles for this major blood group: A1, A2, B1, O1, O1v, and O2. Yep, there are three different alleles for type-O blood.