Advanced Math/Demography

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Expert: - 1/16/2009


Question
Demography: you, 2 parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grand parents and so on.  
Thus 2^n.  Go back 34 generations of say 70 years, 34x70=2380 years.  The
number is larger than the actual population (2^34 = 8,589,934,592). How can
that be?

Answer
Unlike math, people get to make choices.  Some get divorced, some remarry someone else.  I've heard of cases where someone's grandfather and father were the same indivual.

After four generations, people don't consider themselves related any more and usually don't know if they even are related.  Some still might, but after 5 or 6 generations, they don't know at all.

Most people don't even know who their great-great-grandparents were.  If you trace back family lines, you're bound to find some crosses somewhere.  The farther back you go, the more crosses you will find.  Even in the Bible, there is a case of someone marrying their half-sister (same dad, different mom).

If you go over 10 generations back into history, there are numerous people you're related to and most have probably married back into the same line and not even known it.

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Scott A Wilson

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I can answer any question in general math, arithetic, discret math, algebra, box problems, geometry, filling a tank with water, trigonometry, pre-calculus, linear algebra, complex mathematics, probability, statistics, and most of anything else that relates to math. I can even tell you it takes me over 2,000 steps to go a mile, but is that relevant?

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Experience in the area; I have tutored people in the above areas of mathematics for almost two years in AllExperts.com. I have tutored people here and there in mathematics since before I received a BS degree almost 25 years ago. In just two more years, I received an MS degree as well, but more on that later. I tutored at OSU in the math center for all six years I was there. Most students offering assistance were juniors, seniors, or graduate students. I was allowed to tutor as a freshman. I tutored at Mathnasium for well over a year. I worked at The Boeing Company for over 5 years. I received an MS degreee in Mathematics from Oregon State Univeristy. The classes I took were over 100 hours of upper division credits in mathematical courses such as calculus, statistics, probabilty, linear algrebra, powers, linear regression, matrices, and more. I graduated with honors in both my BS and MS degrees. Past/Present Clients: College Students at Oregon State University, various math people since college, over 7,500 people on the PC from the US and rest the world.

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My master's paper was published in the OSU journal. The subject of it was Numerical Analysis used in shock waves and rarefaction fans. It dealt with discontinuities that arose over time. They were solved using the Leap Frog method. That method was used and improvements of it were shown. The improvements were by Enquist-Osher, Godunov, and Lax-Wendroff.

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Master of Science at OSU with high honors in mathematics. Bachelor of Science at OSU with high honors in mathematical sciences. This degree involved mathematics, statistics, and computer science. I also took sophmore level physics and chemistry while I was attending college. On the side I took raquetball, but that's still not relevant.

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I earned high honors in both my BS degree and MS degree from Oregon State. I was in near the top in most of my classes. In several classes in mathematics, I was first. In a class of over 100 students, I was always one of the first ones to complete the test. I graduated with well over 50 credits in upper division mathematics.

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