Talk:Price equation

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You have new messages (last change).

Whow. This page has suddenly changed a lot. I like a lot of the new contents of this page as it suddenly adds to the understanding of Price's equation, however, I think it has lost a lot of its encyclopedic value since the huge edit by PAR on 23 Nov 2004. A couple of reasons for this comment are:

  • The Price equation itself (not the small one, but the full one) doesn't appear in the article until somewhere half way through the article, after some examples have already been given. A better structure would be to give the Price equation, then give its variations (and derivation), and then (maybe even in a seperate page, like Price equation (examples)) give some examples
  • The article is way too long (see also my comment on moving the examples to a seperate page)
  • What is the use of defining expectation, variance and covariance in this page? It would be better to just link to their pages, without introducing them again.
  • My edits on the page before the big update seem to have been lost because of this complete rewrite. As an example, there's no longer a link to Fischer's fundamental theorem of population genetics. Maybe it's just a personal view, but I like edits that are atomic much more than I like monolithic rewrites of pages.

I assume there are different views possible on these comments.

--Anthony Liekens 11:02, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You've just listed a bunch of misgivings I've had myself. I thought well, I'll just do it and see what people think. I would not be offended by any of the rewrites you suggest, and I think I will undertake some of them myself unless you beat me to it. Let's make it a good page. The objections I have to your list are:

  • I did try to include everything in the previous page. Fisher's theorem is still there, near the end of the simple Price equation section. Maybe it needs to be put up front as part of an introductory overview.
  • I looked at the pages on expected value and covariance and it seemed to me that, for the expected value anyway, there are a number of definitions for discrete, continuous, etc, using a different notation, and there would be a lot of head-scratching unless it was explicitly defined as it is being used in the article.

Another thing I would like to include how kin selection is handled by the Price equation, but I don't feel like I understand it well enough right now to write anything.

Paul Reiser 15:17, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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