Proving a Poss Het...

[Pythonfriend]

of course if you breed a possible het there will always be a chance that it is indeed a het, no way around this, its a fact.

But after 20 eggs the chance for this possible het is 1:1048576. Less than one in a million. After 40 eggs its less than one in a million squared, less than one in a trillion.


You cannot compare this to, for example, breeding a bee to a normal and getting only pastels. When you look at the bee, you SEE that it has pastel and spider in it, you KNOW it because you SEE it. It is rational to keep on trying because you know for a fact that the desired result is possible.

With a possible het, you see nothing, you lack one piece of information: You do not know if it is a het or if it is not a het. And statistics is the only way to get more knowledge. If you miss, it is not rational to keep on trying beyond a certain point because you DO NOT know if the desired result is possible, the desired result may be impossible because it is not a het.

a 50% possible het ceases to be a 50% possible het when you try to prove it out. The 50% is based purely on statistics, so any more data that you can feed into the statistics will change that value. Either you prove it out and it jumps up to a 100% proven het, or the percentage goes down. After 7 eggs, all misses, when bred to a visual, you NO LONGER HAVE a 50% possible het, you now have a 1% possible het.

A 50% possible het that failed to prove out does not exist. It is no longer a 50% possible het after that, the statistics change and the chance of it being a het go down based on statistics.

The thing about all of this is that the Poss het is still Poss het until proven to be het. Just because you miss the odds 10000000000000000 times does not reduce the possibility of it being het at all. It just means you had really bad luck.

Not true. The possibility gets cut in half with every egg you hatch out that is not a visual. Any attempt, successful or not, will change the possibility. The initial 50% is based on statistics, and absolutely not immune to further statistical data. and only virgin snakes can be 50% or 66% possible hets. Any breeding erases and replaces that value.