Re: final report

Dear Participants from Stirling Primary School,

Thanks for submitting your final report. I really enjoyed reading sections from individual students. I can see from the statements that everyone worked diligently on the project.

Thanks for the suggestion about having more characteristics to work with. It is not easy to change the forms that we use to gather participant data. When I am able to do so, I will add more characteristics.

As to color blindness, perhaps there were insufficient non-USA participants to provide an accurate picture of the distribution of color blindness. I suggest that the calculations need to be rechecked. The majority of percentages are greater than 1. It appears that the figures need to be multiplied by 100 to change them from a decimal to a percentage.

I suspect that some of the white forelock data are inaccurate. I base this on simple observations: one hardly sees anyone with a white forelock! That applies everywhere…including Africa. I am planning to provide digital pictures of each trait next time I run this project. That may eliminate some of this inaccuracy.

I am concerned about the final statement: "Therefore, the following characteristics must be dominant." The dominant traits are given as part of the instructions. The question is this: Are the dominant traits more common than the recessive?

I hope you'll have time to consider this question. If you wish, you could send in an addendum to your report.

Neil Holzman, Project Leader