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To: gore3000
"no one knows what the precise moment of speciation is" My statement therefore stands in spite of your attempt at confusing the issue.

...by asking you to learn some rudimentary notions about stochastics? Speciation is probablistic in nature. Some examples of a "species" may be able to procreate successfully with some other examples of another "species", while most such attempts would fail. This is the nature of stochastic behavior. You can describe the relationship of the chances of successful procreation as a bell curve. And no one's drawn an arbitrary line in the sand and said "x much probability of successful procreation means speciation". This is why speciation is inexact. Kindly make at least an attempt to follow along in the text. You are far too easily confused to be making the assumption that I am the source of it so readily.

402 posted on 02/06/2002 9:00:17 AM PST by donh
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To: donh
"...by asking you to learn some rudimentary notions about stochastics?

Aaaah, using big words to hide the emptiness of your statements. From the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary online:

Main Entry: sto·chas·tic
Pronunciation: st&-'kas-tik, stO-
Function: adjective
Etymology: Greek stochastikos skillful in aiming, from stochazesthai to aim at, guess at, from stochos target, aim, guess
Date: 1923
1 : RANDOM; specifically : involving a random variable
2 : involving chance or probability : PROBABILISTIC
- sto·chas·ti·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

What the above translates to is that speciation is whatever you wish it to be. That is not a definition, that is not science, that is charlatanism.

476 posted on 02/07/2002 4:09:02 AM PST by gore3000
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