Quote Originally Posted by blackcrystal22 View Post
I'm sorry, but this misconception bothers me quite a bit. After being beaten into my head in statistics, this statement is false.
Because each egg is independent from the other eggs, and does not have any statistical association, each egg has it's own .25 chance of being a BEL.
Just like flipping a coin. Each trial is independent, and after 1,000 trials or so, the 50/50 shows, but after 100, it may not and could be surprisingly off balance.
It is entirely possible that all 20 eggs could not produce a BEL. Just like it's possible (and likely!) to flip a coin and get tails 10 times in a row.
That's not a misconception. It makes more sense to stick to the statistical odds than to assume differently. From any het BEL complex snake x Het BELs, if you get 20 eggs, 5 should be BELs. Each egg has the independant odds of 25% and that carries over to a clutch of 4 eggs, where the clutch then has a 25% chance, or statistically speaking, you should get one BEL from those four eggs. I'm not saying you will, but for every four eggs you have, one of them should be a BEL. While 4 is a very small sample size, those are still the odds. Out of 20 eggs, I'd bet you even money that you hatch between 3-7 BELs, with 5 being the average. The larger the sample group, the closer the odds tend to even out, as you said, but whatever the sample size is, the entire group still has the same 1 in 4 odds as every egg in it. Every probability per egg carries over to the sample size. If you have a 1 in 16 shot and 32 eggs, the only guess I would ever make as to the actual number of those I would hatch would be 2. To say anything else goes against basic logic. I hope this isn't coming off as harsh in any way, but my point is that I see a lot of people saying, "No, it's not 25% of the eggs should be so-and-so, each EGG has a 25% chance of it". Then people reply, "Oh, ok. Thanks". The odds for each egg carry over and become the same odds for the entire clutch or sample size.