Concepts - Part I
- Independence - if two events are independent, the occurrence of one event does not change the probability of a second event. Therefore we multiply the probabilities of each of the seperate events to find the probability of the occurrence of both events.
- Principle of Segregation - Alleles segregate such that each gamete is equally likely to contain each of the two alleles at one locus.
- Probability of an event is the proportion of times that an event is expected to occur in numerous repeated trials.
- Relative frequency is the actual number of events divided by the total number of events.
- Due to sampling a finite (small) number of events, the relative frequency is only an estimate of the probability.
- Mutually exclusive events exist when both events cannot occur simultaniously. If event A occurs, event B cannot have occurred in one trial. We add the probabilities of mutually exclusive events to determine the probability of either one event or the other event occurring.
- Complimentary gene action - Both dominant alleles at each of the two loci are necssary to express one phenotypic class.
- Duplicate gene action - At least one dominant gene is required to express one phenotypic class.
- Monohybid ratios are the result of two alleles segregating at one locus. Di-hybrid ratios are the result of two alleles segregating at two loci. Tri-hybrid ratios are the result of two alleles segregating at three loci.
- Zygotic array - If we know the probability of each type of gamete from the probability of each alleleomorph, we can calculate the probability of each zygote genotype.
- Hypothesis testing - "A hypotheses can never be proved or disproved by a test of significance." The data may agree with a hypothesis, but the data may also agree with several other hypothesis. There is always a certain probability that even when the data support the acceptance of a hypothesis, the data may be the result of an unusual sample and the hypothesis may in fact be wrong.