Why do we say "per egg" instead of "per clutch"

[OhhWatALoser]

Probability is what people should be saying. Not statistically... The probability of this happening is ____. That might clear things up a bit?

Regards,

B

then i guess my question is, how do you use the word statistically correctly?

Well, if you are counting which egg will be which in a clutch(instead of just 11 possibilities) aren't you counting 'per egg' rather than 'per clutch'? Since it doesn't matter which egg was lesser and which was normal, if you are just counting numbers?

Just wondering on that.

Its all the possible outcomes of the clutch over all. it does matter which egg was lesser, because each egg is different and has the 50/50 shot. there are more ways to get the 50/50 spilt than anything else. To say you have the same chance of getting 0 Lessers (1/1024) as 5 Lesser (252/1024) isn't correct, but the chance of getting 0 lessers as 10 Lessers is. With a big enough sample size according to the law of averages, the real world data will reflect that. If You have 11x 10 egg clutches, your most likely not going to see one with 0 lesser, one with 1, one with 2 lessers,...., one with 10 lessers.