Talk:Founder's effect

Note as of the current date this article is inaccurate or misleading in a couple regards, at least so far as I can tell. The first paragraph conflates intragenerational individual variations with intergenerational populational changes. It is the former that are more likely in large populations than in small populations to balance out. The latter changes are smaller, in proportion to size, for the large pops, but no more likely to balance out. Then the second paragraph leaves out what I believe is a key point about the founder's effect, which is that small populations drift faster than large ones. 168... 21:52 22 May 2003 (UTC)
 * 168: Mav and Lexor have both asked us to stop bickering. I wrote this stub because there was nothing here at all.  But just because you are volunteering, as I am, to stay off the genetic drift page, does not mean that we should just repeat the same tedious argument here. I am perfectly willing to leave this article alone if you will, and let Mav, Lexor, and others whom I hope you respect as much as I, work at it.  It is May 22 -- I will not come back to this article for a week.  I do hope that in that time Lexor and others develop this.  When I do come back to it, I will treat it as any other article about a topic on which I am knowledgable, and will seek to add important information and correct mistakes; and I will treat it as any other article about a topic on which I am vaguely interested, and will edit it for style.  To anyone else interested in this article, see you in a week. Slrubenstein

You misunderstand my intent. I'm glad to have your indication that we are now of the same mind, but I've already taken the high road that you are motioning me down. If you look at the page history of this article, you will see that originally I corrected what I saw as errors _within the article_. Then you will see that in light of our dispute I reverted the article to your version and posted my criticism here. 168... 23:30 22 May 2003 (UTC)

Another weakness I believe is this statement "it is possible that the allele frequencies in the small population accurately represent the frequencies in the larger population." Sort of a stickler's point, I suppose, but the assertion isn't true for all circumstances, even in principle. It depends on the size of the colony and the diversity of the parent population. Obviously a random colony of one can't accurately mirror any parent population except a population with zero diversity. If 10 individuals in a parent population of 1000 carry an allele, such that it has a frequency of 1%, then for an emmigrant colony of 10 to mirror the allele frequencies of the parent group, the colony would need 0.1 individuals to carry the allele--which is impossible. 168... 02:56 23 May 2003 (UTC)