Russell
Posts: 1082 Joined: April 2005
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ooh ooh ooh! can I play?
Quote | 1. What sequence of pi could not be explained by known genetic events? | None, of course. What would seem to call for an explanation is the remarkable coincidence that such a sequence should occur in a genome. To wit: 100 nucleotides of a pre-specified sequence having no conceivable (or at least no conceived of as yet) connection to the biology, chemistry or physics of DNA, should occur by chance about once in every 4^100, or 1.6x10^60 sites examined. H. sapiens, for example, has about 3x10^9 sites to examine, so the odds of finding it by chance would be around 2x10^-51. Examine a million or so more completely independent genomes (of course, they don't exist, due to common descent, but just for the sake of argument...) you've only increased the chances to 2x10^-45. In other words, finding it would so defy the odds it would seem to call for some explanation. But now include the possibility of finding either pi, or 'e', or the Golden Ratio, or any of about 3 billion more irrational numbers, and your chance of finding oneof them is pretty good. (This is essentially what Dembski does.)
Quote | 2. What sequence of pi could not be explained by as-yet-unknown naturalistic processes? | None, of course.
Quote | 3. What is more likely, 100 binary places of pi or 1700 consecutive GAA triplets on a chromosome? | The latter, since they can arise by known mechanisms of polymerase "stuttering" and homologous recombination.
Quote | 4. How far into pi does your phone number occur? | Don't know, but it should be on the order of 10,000,000 decimal places (16,666,667 DNA base pairs) - not including the area code. I.e it has a good chance of being found at least a hundred times in the human genome. In fact, I think that might be where the telemarketers found it.
-------------- Must... not... scratch... mosquito bite.
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