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To: dawn53
Son thought it had to do with every 10 years, 120,000 are born so in a thousand years 12,000,000 births would give you a rate of 1.2.

I hate to say it but he may be right. We've been assuming that all the antelope born, lived; but if each one has 5 progeny in ten years and they all live, there's no way the population can stay at 24,000 antelope. So if a lot were killed to hold the population constant, their births add to the number of mutations even though they don't show up as a change in the population.

Thank God I'm a recognized numbers dolt; otherwise I'd be so embarrassed!

64 posted on 12/05/2005 5:54:33 PM PST by Grut
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To: Grut

Looking back at the original problem, I see the question is "how many mutations would enter the gene pool"; this makes the problem impossible to solve, since there's no way of knowing whether the large number of offspring killed are killed before or after reaching breeding age.


66 posted on 12/05/2005 6:02:01 PM PST by Grut
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