Side Comments on Kondrashov’s Paradox

[Dan_Eastwood]

@Mercer

@UncensoredPilgrims

Can you explain why that would be certain?

The Poisson distribution.

Ah! The sweet smell of probability distributions on a Monday morning

@Roy

Using a mutation rate of 1e-8, a genome size of 6e9 and a population of 7e9, the probability of there being an individual with no germline mutations is:

1-((1-((1-(1e-8))^6e9))^7e9)

which (if I’ve successfully negotiated my calculator’s reluctance to handle such small numbers) is 6e-17, or 1 chance in 16 quadrillion {US}.

I get p ~= 6.1295557 \times 10^{-17}, but I cheated.

“16” rather than 6 might be a typo? Either way we are still in the same ballpark.