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To: Doctor Stochastic
It's possible to model the changes in allele frequency as a diffusion process. Diffusion processes have things happening at all "distance" scales.

Cool.

Do the models fit real-life data, especialy regarding phenotype?

104 posted on 01/26/2006 6:53:24 PM PST by Rudder
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To: Rudder

I don't know. I've never done that. There are some studies (which I read, but I don't remember the authors; it was some time ago) that trace gene frequencies using stochastic differential equations. Perhaps a search of GOOGLE SCHOLAR would be useful.

A simple application would be the proof that there is always a "least recent common ancestor" (African Eve). The relation "mother of" (applied to females) is a contraction mapping (there are always fewer mothers than daughters); and thus if iterated, there will be a fixed point; being discrete, the fixed point must consist of a single individual. Similarly for males. Similarly for names.


108 posted on 01/26/2006 6:59:05 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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