Re: Paper: Evolution of species interactions in a biofilm community

Am I being clear?
I think so. You are trying to do what a mathematician would call a
hypothesis test. Some event occurred, and you are trying to calculate
the odds that it was a nonrandom occurence. However, you are starting
with a false assumption.
What are the statistical odds of just the right mutation
for mutual benefit and precisely beneficial to the symbiotic union.
To calculate the odds, one would have to include all the right
mutations including those that did not occur. The authors of the paper
may know what changes actually occurred in biofilm being studied.
However, this is not enough to do a hypothesis test (i.e., evaluate
whether or not this is a nonrandom event). if someone tried to
calculate the odds before the experiment, one would have to know what
all the possibilities were including those mutations that would be
beneficial yet didn't occur.
For example, suppose in the real population some chemical was
used to communicate between species. There are a lot of chemicals that
could have been used to communicate. The large number of alternatives
greatly increases the possibility that some beneficial mutation would
occur. >
My imagination suggests that the odds would be as many as are the possible
permutations involved.
My imagination says that the odds are some factor of the many
permutations involved, not the permutation itself. When one is
calculating odds, one generally has to calculate the combinations, not
just the permutations.
In mathematics, the factor of the permutation that gets to be
part of the odds. is called a combination. The reason is that each
possible benefit decreases the odds by a factor, whether or not that
benefit actually occurs. A lot of mistakes in gambling occur because
the person plugs in the complete permutation, and not the
combination.


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