Talk:Fisher's principle

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This article should include more statistical proofs of this principle. I for one do not believe it because I count more males than females in most places I go. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.161.184.50 (talk) 22:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The reason you see more male people is because some females are at home looking after children, not just their own but those of their relatives as well. Moreover, being a male you will frequent the places where males spend their time such as football matches, and avoid places where females frequent such as coffee mornings. Just visit a department store and I am sure you will wonder where all the men have gone. A B McDonald (talk) 11:26, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Does the 50:50 ratio concern zygotes, newborns, reproductive individuals or all of them? What if there would be species where many males will die before reproducing? Would it be beneficial to produce more males than females so that at reproductive age the relation would be 50:50? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.243.168.198 (talk) 18:34, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

The ratio affects parental investment. If one sex is cheaper to produce then more of that sex should be produced, assuming that the sex ratio is mutable and other assumptions also hold true. Barney the barney barney (talk) 00:07, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Symmetry of the theory

Fisher's idea that the logic holds when males/females are exchanged in his assumptions is obvious nonsense. A man can have sex ten times a year and have ten children, a woman can do the same and still get one child, max. I sure am not the first to notice that. If the theory still holds, this need additional explanation. --Maxus96 (talk) 15:24, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Umm, I hope you realize that all offspring have exactly one father and exactly one mother, and that overall male & female reproductive success are therefore exactly the same. Bueller 007 (talk) 18:41, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

The numerical average is the same, but the distribution has a lot of higher moments for males. Why should that be irrelevant? I going to believe it is, but what's the reason? --Maxus96 (talk) 18:39, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Fisher's argument just looks at the expectation (expected number of grandchildren). Since this is typically applied to reasonably large populations the Law of Large Numbers kicks in and the expectation is a pretty good forecast. Higher moments become irrelevant then. 86.159.17.33 (talk) 21:38, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

Except that it's Not

This is a fallacy, isn't it? I was under the impression most sexual organisms do not reproduce 1:1. That 1:1 is the exception in nature, not the rule. Can anybody provide empirical data in support of 1:1 being predominant? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.151.210.84 (talk) 05:31, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Read the article, check the footnotes. You apparently did not do so. tgeorgescu (talk) 21:40, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Basic Explanation not sufficient

The points under Basic Explanation are not sufficient to explain why nature couldn’t, for example, settle on a 1:3 male to female ratio.

What is left out, which is the main goal of sexual reproduction, is that to maximize fitness in a changing environment sexual reproduction is trying to produce variation in the next generation. Having fewer males as possible fathers would reduce the possible variation in the next generation.

Hence the best investment is almost always equally maximal variation in each sex. This almost always results in the near 50/50 M/F ratio.

So I’d suggest changing the points in the Basic Explanation. DynamicBoldC (talk) 18:56, 1 September 2022 (UTC)