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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2006-06 > 1151465808


From: "Eric Olson" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Rare Haplotype Advice
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 20:36:48 -0700


Rebekah,

That is a narrow happy empirical point of view. I tend to share it. These
Y-DNA allele values seem to hip-hop all around some modal value, or in some
cases bi-modal values. WHY? The range of reported STRs seem to fall
between 8 and 50 or so, OR is it that these particular alleles have been
chosen for analysis because that is what they do? Hmmm... If the mode can
be thought of as the lamppost, then the proverbial one random step at a
time drunk would eventually get a lot further away than 50 paces. There
are mathematics which treat this. It seems more like a spring tethered
random walk to me, with boundaries. Otherwise given enough time huge
allele values would accumulate, which don't seem to be observed. The
question is, what is this spring-like tether?

And is it subject to a Darwinian selection pressure? What unseen force is
at work here? Why is there such order amid the chaos of "random"
mutations? An answer is not required to carry on the statistical business
of genetic genealogy, but we should recognize the empirical nature of what
we are doing, and acknowledge we are ignorant of the basic underlying
mechanisms..

Eric


Rebekah wrote:

I am not sure if I believe in slow vs fast markers. I think
> some markers have a narrow happy range they stick to.

> Eric Olson wrote:
> ...
> > What would be the rational for removing all multi copy markers, etc.?
> >
> > Eric
> >
>
>
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