----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Skinner
To: CF-Community
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 1:29 PM
Subject: RE: Generational Math
You are correct, if you go back far enough we are all related to one another
one way or another. What will happen is that the farther back you go, you
will conceivable have that same ancestor appearing in two or more lines. A
simple example, that does happen. If you have a pair of second cousins who
marry, they would share a common set of great-grandparents. So instead of
having 4 sets of great-grandparents (8 people) they would only have 3
distinct sets (6 people).
What would happen is the percentage of this relationship sharing would grow
the farther back you go.
--------------
Ian Skinner
Web Programmer
BloodSource
www.BloodSource.org
Sacramento, CA
-----Original Message-----
From: John Stanley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 12:08 PM
To: CF-Community
Subject: Generational Math
Okay doing family history research which by the way can be seen at
http://www.netconceptions.com <http://www.netconceptions.com>
<http://www.netconceptions.com> , and stating
to see something odd. I know that the number of ancestors a person has for a
particular generation doubles from the previous generation's number. So at
the 4th generation back from me I have 8, and the 5th I have 16 and so on.
Which leads to this. You can tell the number of ancestors you have for a
generation by taking 2 to the (generation number minus one) power.
This is all fine and dandy, but after a certain point it becomes more and
more improbable that say after 49 generations which is about 1500 years I
would have 562,949,953,421,312 ancestors in that generation.
So what gives. Is the math suspect? Is there an inbreeding curve? Even if
you account for like 50% cross-ancestral breeding, that still leaves a huge
number of people anyone is descended from going back that far. This must
take into account the number of people on earth for the whole generational
period in question.
Anyone?
John
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