razib | November 11, 2009There are many ways one can model population genetic dynamics. A simple avenue is to imagine a deme, a group of breeding individuals, subject to a few major parameters which are modulating genetic variation. Mutation, migration, random drift and selection. A model being what a model is, one's goal is to simplify, utilize approximations, and still manage to extract insight as to the relevant aspects of the dynamics one is focusing on (unless you're Stephen Wolfram). One of the major upsides of the Price Equation is that it makes no compromises, rather, it starts from first principles and…
razib | November 11, 2009In the post below on the Price Equation I stayed true to George Price's original notation in his 1970 paper where he introduced his formalism. But here is a more conventional form, the "Full Price Equation," which introduces a second element on the right-side.
Δz = Cov(w, z) / w
One can specifically reformulate this verbally for a biological context:
Change in trait = Change due to selection on individuals + Change due to individual transmission
The first element on the right-side is explicable as selection upon a heritable trait. w is the conventional letter used for "fitness," so w is…
razib | November 10, 2009I notice more people have Google Wave now. What do you think? I keep leaving blank messages by mistake. Am I the only one?
razib | November 10, 2009In the comments below I referred to the "Price Equation." Here is what William D. Hamilton had to say about George Price's formalism in Narrow Roads of Gene Land:
A manuscript did eventually come from him but what I found set out was not any sort of new derivation or correction of my 'kin selection' but rather a strange new formalism that was applicable to every kind of natural selection. Central to Price's approach was a covariance formula the like of which I had never seen...Price had not like the rest of us looked up the work of the pioneers when he first became interested in selection;…
razib | November 9, 2009I have made reference to an epic fantasy series, The Wheel of Time, several times before on this blog. The series' author, Robert Jordan, died in 2007 and left the story incomplete. Jordan had made it to book 11 over the past 20 years, but the finale was left unwritten. So I hear, as I stopped keeping up with the series around volume 5 (I got bored with it and never finished). Nevertheless, The Wheel of Time has interested me because it was an empirical test of issues which crop up in literature. For example, it was noticeable when I was reading the series that Jordan's plotting was becoming…
razib | November 8, 2009Tom Rees, Income inequality drives church attendance:
...we find that attendance rates are particularly high in countries with more socioeconomic inequalities and fewer social welfare expenditure. This effect equally applies to both poor and rich people, which is in line with the idea that because of economic mobility and the possibility of unemployment in the (nearby) future also the more affluent population feels more insecure in countries with more inequalities and without a well-developed social welfare system.
We also see that people with a lower income and who are unemployed attend…
razib | November 8, 2009He addresses the Behe diavlog. Sort of. McWhorter states that he did not find the rebuttals to the arguments in Michael Behe's Edge of Evolution persuasive. Fair enough, but I would be curious as to what other books on evolution he has read (I think he mentioned Sean Carroll?). The math in something like John Maynard Smith's Evolutionary Genetics is really not that hard (mostly algebra). One of the major problems I have with intelligent, open-minded people, who have looked into the "debate" and are not convinced about evolution is that they know the terms of the "argument" only in the…
razib | November 8, 2009No Islamic Landmarks Were Harmed in the Making of '2012' (via Unreligious Right):
The trailer for 2012 plays like a highlight reel of civilization falling apart all over the world, but it's religion that gets the brunt of Emmerich's digital pounding: A Buddhist temple gets hit by a tidal wave. The Sistine Chapel crumbles to pieces as a split tears right down the middle of Michelangeo's painting of God touching Adam's finger. St. Peter's Basilica rolls over onto a crowd of devoted worshipers. Rio de Janeiro's iconic Christ the Reedemer statue falls to earth as its wracked by shockwaves. The…
razib | November 8, 2009In reviewing a paper which sketches out the boundary conditions under which group-level natural selection would result in the emergence of altruism as a genetically encoded trait, I stated:
... I would look to cultural group selection, because there are many cases of women being assimilated into a dominant culture, and their offspring speaking the language, and expressing the values, in totality of their fathers. One inherits 50% of one's genes from one's mother and one's father, but inheritance of cultural traits which are distinctive between parents may show very strong biases. Partitioning…
razib | November 7, 2009Another article on Creationism in Turkey:
To John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, however, the news could hardly be more encouraging.
"Why I'm so interested in seeing creationism succeed in Turkey is that evolution is an evil concept that has done such damage to society," said Morris, a Christian who has led several searches for Noah's Ark in eastern Turkey. Members of his group have addressed Turkish conferences numerous times.
...
After a decade in the trenches, Kence said he believes aggressive creationism "is part of a larger plan to convert people to a…
razib | November 7, 2009I recently finished reading The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, a new book by Nicholas Wade, a science writer for The New York Times. Before giving it the "full treatment" I thought it behooved me to revisit some of the scientific literature which Wade relies upon to give form to his argument. One of the pillars of The Faith Instinct is group selection, and one of the scholars who Wade specifically cites is the economist Samuel Bowles. Bowles was an author on a paper I reviewed earlier this week, on the empirical assessment of the extent of heritability of wealth…
razib | November 2, 2009As I gave a nod to statistical tricks and subtle shell games very recently, the material I review subsequently should be viewed with skepticism and caution. A few days ago I also pointed to a paper which describes and models intergenerational transfers of wealth across various societies. In other words, what parents transmit to children. From the perspective of someone who reads this blog, obviously parents transmit genes to their offspring.
To the left is an old scatterplot from Francis Galton which shows the dependence of the height of children upon the average height of parents.…
razib | November 1, 2009Early (2002) reader of Gene Expression, William Gunn, is leaving a biotech company in San Diego and is looking for another job. Here's his Linkedin.
razib | October 31, 2009I rarely post much political commentary here, because it would add little value as I have nothing distinctive to say in that domain. At Secular Right I am wont to do data analysis because I think data is something that needs to be injected into political discussions and commentary. But in any case, today I put up an essay, Religious diversity & its discontents. In it I make clear my distaste for multiculturalism, so if you are a reader who would find such opinions to your distaste, I invite you not to click! My own opinion is that multiculturalism as it is presented is not a noble lie,…
razib | October 31, 2009Andrew Gelman has started a new blog at ScienceBlogs, Applied Statistics. Someone should design him a header, perhaps a fancified Bayes' theorem?
razib | October 31, 2009Spotted Piglet Hiccups: Boozy Breslin Clashes With Mosque:
The much-hyped, soon-to-open Breslin restaurant, situated in the 12-story Ace Hotel on Broadway and 29th, is giving members of the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street some agita. "Five times a day, there's a hundred cabs on the street--the good news is you can always get a cab," co-owner Ken Friedman told the Transom the other evening. He said some mosque visitors "object to seeing people drink alcohol."
After the recent FergusStock, a festival during which famed British chef Fergus Henderson cooked whole pigs for a rapt crowd…
razib | October 31, 2009In a piece that outlines SEC follies:
In fact, Mr. Madoff said in the jailhouse interview that, on two occasions, he was certain it was only a matter of days or even hours before he would be caught. The first time, in 2004, he assumed the investigators would check his clearinghouse account. He said he was "astonished" that they did not, and theorized that they might have decided against doing so because of his stature in the industry.
"I'm very proud of the role I played in the industry," he said. "Of course I destroyed that now."
In Mr. Madoff's second close call in 2006, investigators…