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How the laws of probability are related to Biology?

June 3, 2022
written by Azhar Ejaz
image showing dices explaining probablity

The laws of probability are important concepts in biology. This involves understanding how and why there are patterns of inheritance and variation in a population. There are two kinds of variation. The first is variation between individuals and the second is variation within an individual.


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Variation between individuals occurs because of differences in the genes of each individual and the environment. For example, a family with a large number of sons is likely to produce many tall men, while families with large numbers of daughters produce many short women.

Variation within an individual happens because of the random mutation of the genetic material. The genes are in a continuous state of change, and this results in mutations being introduced into the gene pool and causing a change in the genetic makeup of a population.

As the result of these mutations, new genetic information is introduced into the gene pool, and the characteristics of that particular generation differ slightly from those of the previous one.

The laws of probability are used to describe the patterns that are observed when examining variation and can be represented as:

• The Law of Large Numbers (LLN): Probability increases with sample size.

• The Central Limit Theorem (CLT): Variance decreases as sample size increases.

• The Law of Similarity (LS): The similarity of two things increases as similarity increases.