Tag Archives: Math

Polemics

How long will it take to sort a deck of cards by trial and error?

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Inside the cell, things like proteins and DNA are formed by sequencing parts together in just the right way so that the sequence will have biological function. If the sequence is wrong, because some component of the sequence is the wrong piece or is in the wrong place, the sequence has no function. It’s just like writing English or computer instructions.

To calculate the probabilities, you have to use a rule called “The Product Rule”, because the order of the parts in the sequence (“permutation”) is important. For example, the odds of getting the sequence “ABC” just by choosing three random letters is 1/26 x 1/26 x 1/26 = 1/17576. Things get very unlikely quite quickly, don’t they?

So, take a look at Neil Simpson’s latest post, where he uses cards instead of letters or amino acids, but the principle is exactly the same. His calculation is a little different because the odds actually go down a little each time you choose a card. So, for the first card, it’s 1/52, but the second card is only 1/51, and so on…

Excerpt:

This is by no means a definitive argument against evolution, but I offer it to put the “time, chance and random mutation” theory in perspective.

Everyone knows that micro-evolution occurs, such as dog breeding and bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.  But macro-evolutionists believe that with enough time an amazingly complex single cell of unknown origin could make lots and lots of small changes, develop reproductive capacities and eventually become humans, elephants, caterpillar/butterflies, chameleons and so much more.

Let’s consider something very simple.  Imagine that you shuffle a deck of cards.  If you shuffled it one time per second, how often would all the cards go back into their original order? (Ace of spades, King of spades, etc.)  The math is simply 1/52 (the odds of the Ace of spades being on top) times 1/51 times 1/50, etc. I left out the Jokers to make it easier.

Guess how many years it takes?

Click through to see his calculations, or do them yourself! It’s easy and fun! Neil has a pretty fun discussion going on with the angry atheists who frequent his site, too.

This is everyone should learn probabilities in school, because then we can really talk about these things with our neighbor. Shalini can even do biochemistry, so she can actually explain it even better than I can!

Remember, we are looking for a specific sequence of cards – the sequence that the cards originally came in. In this example, it’s that sequence and that sequence alone that has biological function. The other sequences are just junk – they have no biological function. And most importantly, you don’t get to save any of the cards that are in the right spots because the sequence as a whole has no present function that would allow it to be “saved” for later. You have to re-select all 52 cards each time at random!

A typical protein isn’t made of 52 parts, it’s made of around 200, and there are 80 possible amino acids, not just 26! And in the case of proteins,the vast majority of the possible sequences that you can make won’t have any biological function at all! (And there are many more problems besides, such as chirality, cross reactions, and bonding type). Even if you filled the whole universe with reactants and reacted it all at Planck time, for the entire history of the universe, you still wouldn’t be likely to get even one protein!

You can read more about the origin of life in this post.

Commentary

Feminists urge preferential treatment for women in math and science

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Here are the latest numbers from National Journal magazine. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Women now claim more than 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, 61 percent of all master’s degrees, and half of all professional and doctoral degrees, according to Education Department data cited by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry and others. They also earn more Ph.D.s than men in the humanities, education, health sciences, and social sciences, in-cluding two-thirds of new psychology doctorates.

And Obama and the Democrats are on board with pushing men further out of the university:

Administration officials and others are “promising to litigate, regulate, and legislate the nation’s universities until women obtain half of all academic degrees in science and technology and hold half of the faculty positions in those areas,” as my colleague Neil Munro detailed in the July 4 National Journal.

With federal agencies already preparing aggressive gender-equity reviews, the feminists’ biggest potential weapon is Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination in education. While commendably opening up opportunities, Title IX has also been used to require colleges to field as many female athletes as male, even though fewer women are interested. Many colleges have met their quotas by cutting back programs for male athletes.

The push for what some feminists call “Title-Nining” the sciences makes especially timely the recent publication of The Science on Women and Science, a book of 10 essays edited by Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute.

So, the future for the Obama administration is to “Title-Nine” science and math to make sure that women and men are equally represented. Even if they have to shrink math and science programs down to nothing to have 50-50 parity. As long as the feminists achieve their goal of a perfect 50-50 distribution of men and women in every area of life, then it’s all worth it, right? Who needs math and science when you have feminism?

And there’s loads of taxpayer money (some of it mine) available to help the social engineers achieve their goals:

As the academic debate rages on, feminists seeking to engineer 50-50 male-female ratios have already directed millions of dollars of federal and university money to special efforts to increase the number of girls and women in math and science. They may also be sending a message that boys and men are on their own, except perhaps for re-education programs to purge them of gender bias. Ever-more-overt quotas (“goals”) in hiring and promotions to push women ahead of better-credentialed males are very much on the feminist agenda.

“Few academic scientists know anything about the equity crusade,” Sommers writes. “Most have no idea of its power, its scope, and the threats they may soon be facing. The business community and citizens at large are completely in the dark.”

I am a huge fan of Christina Hoff Sommers and have both of her books on feminism. I hope this new one is as good as the others! I wonder what women will do for husbands and fathers when there is a shortage of decent, educated, hard-working men? Good thing I don’t have any sisters or daughters to worry about. But I feel bad for marriage-minded women today. Everything was ruined by feminism before they were even born.

Commentary

Walter Williams asks how well public schools perform for the money

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Walter Williams explains how much public schools cost and how well they perform.

One of the most left-wing places in the country is Washington, D.C. – which votes 90% Democrat.

How good are schools run by Democrats?

Only 14 percent of Washington’s fourth-graders score at or above proficiency in the reading and math portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. Their national rank of 51 makes them the nation’s worst. Eighth-graders are even further behind with only 12 percent scoring at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent in math and again the worst performance in the nation. One shouldn’t be surprised by Washington student performance on college admissions tests. They have an average composite SAT score of 925 and ACT score of 19.1, compared to the national average respectively of 1017 and 21.1. In terms of national ranking, their SAT and ACT rankings are identical to their fourth- and eighth-grade rankings — dead last.

And how expensive are schools run by Democrats?

During the 2006-07 academic year, expenditures per pupil averaged $13,848 compared to a national average of $9,389. That made Washington’s per pupil expenditures the third highest in the nation coming in behind New Jersey ($14,998) and New York ($14,747). Washington’s teacher-student ratio is 13.9 compared with the national average of 15.3 students per teacher, ranking 18th in the nation. What about teacher salaries? Washington’s teachers are the highest paid in the nation, having an average annual salary of $61,195 compared with the nation’s average $46,593.

Public schools cost too much and perform too little.