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Kyle James

Yes, of course Slither....but I've noticed that people tend of leave out the word "possible" or percentages. :) For example, I just bought 3 female corns. After they got here, I wrote the seller and asked if he had any history on these three (explaining that it didn't matter except that I may change my mind in how I pair them based on what they might be het for). He told me he though that the oketee was het for anery.

Now, I realize there's a big difference between cheap little corns and high dollar ball morphs but here's the problem...did he mean she was 100 percent het or possibly het? I know what it "should" mean but that's not neccessarily what it does mean. I will not know until I've bred her a few times to see what she throws and there's no way I'd base my conclusions on a mere 7 offspring. That's a poor sample size.

I think, in this case, if it was such a high dollar animal, and important to him, he shoud have gotten all the information before he laid his money down...he should have that "documentation" promised to him in hand. Otherwise, he should have invested in an albino in the first place, rather than playing the odds. If he wanted a sure thing, he should have bought a sure thing...not tried to rely on a possibility of producing his desired outcome.

Even though one would expect at least 2 of 7 of the offspring to be albino, there is a chance that fate dealt him a bad hand. If there is a 50-75 percent chance any one of those babies could be albino, and he got all normals, it's not impossible that the seller was being honest. It's unlikely that this would happen but it could. All I'm saying is, breed her a couple times...get a better representation of her make-up, then complain...or buy that albino in the first place if one is so dead set on getting more albinos. But, I think it's just ugly to sling someone through the mud when what they've been shown isn't conclusive evidence.

And, to be fair to the seller, one should not bad mouth him until they know for sure. Politely speculate, sure...but I've seen some pretty ugly words here. I find it offensive, which is why I jumped into this conversation. I usually don't post here unless I have a connection somehow but in this case, I'm am offended.

Maybe the seller did lie...maybe he didn't. Maybe he said "possible het" and the buyer heard "het." Maybe she is really undoubtedly het and this batch of offspring was a fluke. There are too many possibilities here to declare that someone is a liar or worse.

Thanks again, Rich for explaining so perfectly what I was trying to get out...I knew what I wanted to say but it just wasn't coming out right. LOL!
 
Sybella

Although I am not saying that this is the case here, but if the seller "left out" that it was "possible het" or soforth, that would be misrepresentation of the animal being sold. Het means definetely het, not that it may be. And I will agree with Webslave that it is POSSIBLE to have all normal hets in this case, but that is a slim posibility, the odds are definitive here, he should have had 50% albino no matter the clutch size as long as the female really was het albino. Once again, it is posible to get all normal hets, but if you do the math, it is HIGHLY unlikely. Thank you
 
And I will agree with Webslave that it is POSSIBLE to have all normal hets in this case, but that is a slim posibility, the odds are definitive here, he should have had 50% albino no matter the clutch size as long as the female really was het albino. Once again, it is posible to get all normal hets, but if you do the math, it is HIGHLY unlikely.
Click to expand...

I'm not taking sides in this particular thread, but I strongly disagree with your statement, Michael. I have produced thousands of clutches of eggs over the years, working with single and multi heterozygous animals. It is NOT highly unlikely at all that you will not get the percentages that are predicted in a genetics text book.

Matter of fact, I would have to say that given a small sampling such as a single clutch of eggs, getting a perfect match with the predicted results is MUCH more unlikely than not.
 
But

If you were breeding het to het I would agree, but a albino to a het albino I would have to disagree. But..........Please realize I am only looking at this from a mathmatical standpoint of the genetic probabilities. I have never bred albino BP's so can only speak from a mathmatical standpoint. I know if I bred my Hypo Corn to a "het" Hypo Corn and had no Hypo's whatsoever I would also think something was wrong. But like I said, I have not bred albino BP's yet, maybe there are factors I am not aware of with them that change the probabilities, if that is the case then my sincerest apologies. Thank you
 
P.S.

Please realize also that I am by no means an expert in this area, and I know very well I could be completely wrong, and if that is the case I am more than happy to be told how I am wrong and what is right. I do not mind constructive criticism at all. I am here to learn as much as possible. Thank you
 
Michael,

You are thinking in mathematical terms, while Rich is referring to statistical terms. What are the chances of an event to happen (I've always like to refer to it as "luck"!). Similar but yet different.

Regards.
 
It is really simple to calculate the odds of not producing an albino in this breeding. For any single egg there is a 50% chance for an albino or a normal, so for 7 eggs the odds that they will all come out normal or all albino is the same and is equal to 1/2 to the nth power with n=number of eggs.

So for 7 eggs the odds are 1 in 128 trials that the clutch would either be all albinos or all normals. So less than a 1% chance (0.8%). For 6 eggs it is about a 1.6% chance, 5 eggs is a 3% chance, 8 eggs is a 0.04%.

So while not on the scale of winning the lottery, the odds still get pretty slim when you get to a clutch size of 6-8 eggs. This of course also assumes that sperm and ova carrying the albino mutation are as viable as without.
 
Exactly

1 in 128 is to me, "Highly Unlikely" Nice job with the computations, I was thinking in terms of a square but your percentile breakdown is much easier to understand. Thank you
 
Let me help you with probabilities. This happened to me already this year once.

We all know that you breed a pastel to pastel at least half the babies should be pastels and 1 in 4 should be supers with 1 in 4 being normals. I got 5 eggs from a pastel to pastel breeding. I hatched out zeros super pastels, zero pastels and 5 normals. That's worse odds than breeding a albino, or any other recessive gene, to a het. Same male I bred to a normal and got 8 eggs. Out of the eight eggs 1 pastel, great odds there as well. Balanced out later with a clutch of 10 eggs and 7 pastels. Explain that?

My point here is you probably didn't get hets, but you need to do more breeding with the females to get even more eggs to prove it out yes or no. Who know next year maybe you get 7 or 8 albinos out of the 8 eggs. Will you be willing to retract everything you said here if that is the case? More importantly would you be willing to repay him for all the lost business because of what you said when you got unlucky the first time? Hard questions to answer you just have to remember this isn't an exact science and you need to be sure of yourself before you leap to conclusions.

David Van Houten
Logan Enterprises
 
This is the point I am trying to make. You can't jump to a conclusion based on such a small amount of empirical data.

As a for instance, years ago I got a pair of animals from a friend of mine that were supposed to be some sort of Baird's cross het for Amelanism. For the first two years, getting roughly 7 to 10 eggs in a clutch, I didn't get any Amelanistics. Now I was beginning to doubt my friend, but not his word as much as that perhaps he had made an honest mistake. The animals were interesting enough in their own right, so I kept the adults anyway. One the third year of breeding, I then got two Amelanistics to hatch out.

I could have easily made a real ass out of myself in that situation plus probably lost a friend at the same time.

Doug Moody told me that he had been breeding the same Nelson's Milk Snakes together for 7 or 8 years before he hatched out a pair of albinos. So what is the more likely scenario: (1) Those animals were het for Amelanism all along, but his luck was just rotten up to that point, or (2) Both animals spontaneously produced the same identical mutation for Amelanism that year?
 
Statistics is a very difficult discipline. Certainly when you only have one, or even ten clutches, odds of one in 128 of getting no amel seems wrong, but if you were to hatch out 128 clutches, would you be surprised if one of them was all normal? Highly unlikely is more like one in thousands. Luck is a fickle thing. Statistics is simply the mastery of the mathematics of randomness. (I do know what I am talking about, I have a degree in Statistics, and probability was one of my specialties)

While if these were my snakes, I would have strong doubts on this issue, I would not be able to make that conclusion definitevely. I would probably wait until I had another clutch at the very least.

But as Sybella said, at the very least you do know that all seven ARE het for albino, since one of the parents is homozygous for that trait. So if nothing else you now have hets to sell or keep and breed. Small comfort, but better than nothing!
 
I was going to stay out of this thread but I could resist taking another peek...and I am so happy I did! This thread did a complete turn-around from a sour bash session, to mature and constructive posts. There are a lot of great people on this forum!! :)
 
Statistics = luck

Sasheena,

Luck is a fickle thing.
Click to expand...

Luck: Giving a number of possibilities, what are the odds of something happening to you. Doesn't that fit the definition of "probability" from a straight statistic perspective too.

Regards.
 
Well there is luck, statistics, and Murphey's Law.

Statisticians are very fond of a saying, I believe it's by Winston Churchill (but it's too early in the morning for me to be that clear). I even put this quote in my one and only textbook I wrote:

"There are three kinds of Liars. Liars, damned liars, and statisticians."

I think that statisticians are fond of this quote because they understand that statistics and probability are pure math. REALITY makes statistics and probability a liar more often than not. I think the most glorius thing about statistics--from a crazy statistician you must understand--is that while it's a big fat liar with small samples: 7 normals in a sample that should be 50% normals, it is correct when you get large samples statistics is pure as anything. It's the mathematics of the universe... but not the mathematics of five grains of sand, but instead 5 million grains of sand.

Oh jeepers, it's WAY too early to wax so poetic about something I only have a degree in and don't do on a day to day basis. (I'm a high school math teacher).

All the above said, gotta wait for at least one more clutch. If you have 14 babies that are all normals, I'd say the probability that your "het" is het is becoming closer and closer to zero.

In any case, there are something like four threads on this individual, enough to make me wary, regardless of statistics. Duly noted. Do not do business with Kyle James. (On my mental notebook).
 
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