The first interdisciplinary project of the school year was undertaken by Year 10 b. It was in the subjects’ biology and mathematics. Our aim was to find a question that we need both an understanding of genetics and probability to answer. This question was ‘why don’t we look like our siblings?’
From the biological point of view we needed to have a good understanding of what causes genetic variation in gametes and then zygotes. We explored the random alignment and crossing over of chromosomes during mitosis, we then talked about the random fusing of gametes.
By using various tools of probability we tried to solve this mathematical problem. So how probable is it that there are two siblings born with the same genes? We approximated the huge number step by step. Each cause of variation decreases the probability and adds to the complexity of the problem. Our final number was 1/1.775x1051
