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While that's a nice way to approach a mathematical problem, it does not take into account the social aspects of the problem. For example, it used to be (and per
by micheljansen 10y ago
While that's a nice way to approach a mathematical problem, it does not take into account the social aspects of the problem. For example, it used to be (and perhaps still is?) quite common for families to aspire to have a boy and therefore have another child when they have a girl, but not when they have a boy.
Interestingly, these sort of things are much easier to model empirically the way you did (all you would need is a small tweak to the "haveAKid" condition in the while loop around line 35), whereas the math gets pretty complicated fast.
- dhimes 10y agoWell, it was posted in probability and not is some social science board. So I thought it was safe to assume a purely mathematical question. Not that I can answer it...
- mudbungie 10y agoYeah, I wrote that after staring at it for a few minutes, and giving up any pretense that I could model it with confidence.
- oh_sigh 10y agoSocial and biological aspects. Assume there may be some genetic factor which makes it impossible(or even just less equal-odds) for a pair to produce a female, or male. If that's the case, men will on average have more brothers than women do.