The Maths of Genealogy
You may think that Family History and Maths don't have an awful lot in common. But they can! This week I'm going to talk you through the 'Maths of Genealogy'. (You may want a calculator!)
Let's start with how many people are there in that generation of ancestors. So if we start with your great grandparents, the sequence goes:
8,16,32,64,...
So I'm going to use an nth term, don't worry if you have forgotten or don't know what that is.
In this G means how many great's there are in the relationship, so Great-Great-Great would be 3.
The nth term is 2^(G+2). (^, means to the power of, which means how many times you multiply the base number by its self, in this term the base number is always 2). As an example, say I wanted to know how many 8x Great-Grandparents I had: I would put g=8, so 2^(8+2) = 1024. This means I have 1024, 8x Great-Grandparents. This is good when you want to quickly know how many you have. Of course this is mathematically speaking as there might be inter-family relationships! This, you can use when ever you want!
Lets take this further:
Weirdly, nth terms like this proof we are all related. This is because it doubles every generation there is, so as a rough average a new generation occurs every 25 years or so. So if we went back to 900 years ago you would have more mathematical ancestors than the population at the time. This means everybody is related and there is always some inter-family relationships.
I hope I didn't confuse you that much!
Published: 22 January 2015
Let's start with how many people are there in that generation of ancestors. So if we start with your great grandparents, the sequence goes:
8,16,32,64,...
So I'm going to use an nth term, don't worry if you have forgotten or don't know what that is.
In this G means how many great's there are in the relationship, so Great-Great-Great would be 3.
The nth term is 2^(G+2). (^, means to the power of, which means how many times you multiply the base number by its self, in this term the base number is always 2). As an example, say I wanted to know how many 8x Great-Grandparents I had: I would put g=8, so 2^(8+2) = 1024. This means I have 1024, 8x Great-Grandparents. This is good when you want to quickly know how many you have. Of course this is mathematically speaking as there might be inter-family relationships! This, you can use when ever you want!
Lets take this further:
Weirdly, nth terms like this proof we are all related. This is because it doubles every generation there is, so as a rough average a new generation occurs every 25 years or so. So if we went back to 900 years ago you would have more mathematical ancestors than the population at the time. This means everybody is related and there is always some inter-family relationships.
I hope I didn't confuse you that much!
Published: 22 January 2015
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