If a husband and wife have a 50% chance of having a child with autism (50% of their children should be born with it). In reality, would this 50% ratio be more closely approached if they had FEW children or MANY children?
Statistically, the more children they have, the closer this 50% ratio would be.
but why would this be so...is it because when you have less children the gene may have skipped them so it would be more likelier to show up in the other children?
There's a 50% chance each child will be normal. It's well within the range of probability that the first two children will be normal. But the more children the couple has, then statistically the odds will catch up with them.
Here's an easy way to check this out. You and a friend pretend you're answering a true-false test. We know there's a 50% chance of getting an answer right. If you each randomly write 50 T - F answers, you should approach 50% agreement. But, on how many answers did you agree for the first two answers? On the first five answers? On the first 10 answers?
What is 1/1000000 (one divided by a millions) multiplied by 1/1000000 (one divided y a million)?
To determine whether the 50% chance of having a child with autism will be more closely approached with fewer or more children, we need to consider probability and the concept of convergence.
In probability theory, the law of large numbers states that as the number of trials or observations increases, the average of the results will get closer to the expected value or theoretical probability. In this case, the expected value is a 50% chance of having a child with autism.
Therefore, statistically speaking, having more children increases the likelihood of getting closer to the expected 50% ratio. With a small number of children, the outcome may deviate significantly from the expected ratio due to random chance. For example, a couple with few children might have all of them born with autism or none of them born with autism, which would not align with the 50% expectation.
However, as the number of children increases, the outcomes tend to converge toward the expected ratio. This means that the more children a couple has, the more likely the proportion of children born with autism will approach the theoretical 50% chance.
It is important to note that even with a large number of children, the actual ratio of children with autism may not precisely reach 50%, as statistical probabilities work on averages and trends rather than certainties. The outcome for any given couple will depend on the interplay of genetic and environmental factors that influence the development of autism.