What are the odds? (6/7 are male)

ComfortCreator

Well-Known Member
In a normal distribution the odds of 6 out of 7 is roughly 5%. In a large population (# of grows in the world, lifetimes) it will happen roughly 1 out of 20 grows...

When growing regular seeds we compute the odds of getting totally fked real simply...odds multiplied times themselves.

How do i insure at least one female?
Grow 1 seed 50% fail rate.
Grow 2 seeds 25% fail rate.
3 12.5
4 6.25
5 3.125
6 1.625
7...
8...
9...
10...

You see that by sowing 10, the odds become 0.5 to the 10th power, infinitesimally small...but possible.

Like Jim Carrey...so ive got a chance?! is always in play.

The odds you have zero? Just over 0.8%.
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
Maths is like this, if i want a 50/50 average i will flip to coins and make one pile heads then one tails. Now reflip and make four piles - ones that were heads and now tails etc. Now flip again and again till you have 1000 piles. Now assign male and female alternatively to each pile and you see nature isnt just 50/50 for a reason like a simple xoin toss but many many many and that is why not every 1.56% of grows arent all male like you exoect in one simple round of coin tosses.


Otherwise one year every plant in the world would be male and in the last millions of years species died out.

Maths, that shit i thought id never need after school.


I do think the male was involved in those odds. For example, some guys just throw X chromosomes in their sperm so it's nearly impossible for them to have a male child without science getting involved.

If a male cannabis plant had the same issue with tossing Y chromosomes then more of it's beans would end up as male than female because of the pollen not being 50/50.

Good breeders pick their males with a lot of selection criteria, potency, growth structure and tendency to throw X chromosomes among others...
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
Maths is like this, if i want a 50/50 average i will flip to coins and make one pile heads then one tails. Now reflip and make four piles - ones that were heads and now tails etc. Now flip again and again till you have 1000 piles. Now assign male and female alternatively to each pile and you see nature isnt just 50/50 for a reason like a simple xoin toss but many many many and that is why not every 1.56% of grows arent all male like you exoect in one simple round of coin tosses.


Otherwise one year every plant in the world would be male and in the last millions of years species died out.

Maths, that shit i thought id never need after school.
I think you actually can calculate the odds of dependent events by multiplying the percentage of one happening by the percentage of the other. So getting a 1 on a 6-sided die is 1/6. Having it happen twice in a row is 1/36 and so on. Not sure we want to argue about this, LOL. Not very exciting. I don’t think that means that plants would go extinct one year because they’re all males — the odds of that would be so infinitesimally small as to be nearly impossible.
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
Its not an argument just talk. All ways are right but the plant is a complex system and nature does complex maths with ease.

Away from assuming cannabis is a 50/50 male female a computer model would suggest the species would do just as well at 40/60 male female and still quite well at 30/70. We notice a little pollen goes a long way and also our artificial breeding for bigger buds whereas wild im assuming they would be smaller on a same size plant so lower calyx ratio and pollen would go even futher.

The odds are shifted again with a high chance that wild plants can herm either from stress or at the end of the season if not pollinated.

We havent found any trigger points to influence sex yet, nice if we got more females at a certain temperature or could apply some chem and choose its sex.

Just stupid stuff whilst waiting for your preflowers to show, hopefully some pistols.

I think you actually can calculate the odds of dependent events by multiplying the percentage of one happening by the percentage of the other. So getting a 1 on a 6-sided die is 1/6. Having it happen twice in a row is 1/36 and so on. Not sure we want to argue about this, LOL. Not very exciting. I don’t think that means that plants would go extinct one year because they’re all males — the odds of that would be so infinitesimally small as to be nearly impossible.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
Its not an argument just talk. All ways are right but the plant is a complex system and nature does complex maths with ease.

Away from assuming cannabis is a 50/50 male female a computer model would suggest the species would do just as well at 40/60 male female and still quite well at 30/70. We notice a little pollen goes a long way and also our artificial breeding for bigger buds whereas wild im assuming they would be smaller on a same size plant so lower calyx ratio and pollen would go even futher.

The odds are shifted again with a high chance that wild plants can herm either from stress or at the end of the season if not pollinated.

We havent found any trigger points to influence sex yet, nice if we got more females at a certain temperature or could apply some chem and choose its sex.

Just stupid stuff whilst waiting for your preflowers to show, hopefully some pistols.
I am really curious what the other plants I’ve started will turn out to be. If they’re mostly male I’ll try using a male from another cultivar next year, hopefully break the chain if this is a tendency to throw off Y pollen.
 

drcucumber

Well-Known Member
By my calculations, a bit over 1.5 percent.
No. You calculated the probability that a given 6 in a row would be male. You neglected the 7th event.
But more importantly, you need the probability that any 6 of the 7 would be male.

There are 128 different possible combinations of 7 seeds. From 7 males, to 7 females, to everything in between. And of this 128, there are 7 different ways you could have ended up with 6 out of 7 males

1. MMMMMMF
2. MMMMMFM
3. MMMMFMM
4. MMMFMMM
5. MMFMMMM
6.. MFMMMMM
7. FMMMMMM

Each of these combinations is equally likely. Any given combination of sexes has a probability of 0.5^7. (You calculated 0.5^6).

That means it was 7 / 128 [Or 7 x 0.5^7] = 5.5% likely to happen.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
No. You calculated the probability that a given 6 in a row would be male. You neglected the 7th event.
But more importantly, you need the probability that any 6 of the 7 would be male.

There are 128 different possible combinations of 7 seeds. From 7 males, to 7 females, to everything in between. And of this 128, there are 7 different ways you could have ended up with 6 out of 7 males

1. MMMMMMF
2. MMMMMFM
3. MMMMFMM
4. MMMFMMM
5. MMFMMMM
6.. MFMMMMM
7. FMMMMMM

Each of these combinations is equally likely. Any given combination of sexes has a probability of 0.5^7. (You calculated 0.5^6).

That means it was 7 / 128 [Or 7 x 0.5^7] = 5.5% likely to happen.
So even likelier than I figured — higher than 1 in 20. Can you perform that math wizardry to predict how many females I’m likely to end up with in the next 10 or so I popped?
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
Ive never witnessed any tendency or observation towards male or female ever, its completely out of our hands in a way.

Those small growths should have trippled in size by now, if they are still tiny looking you need to find the next set of preflowers as these wont develop any more.

I hope you might have found more pistols maybe as well.


I am really curious what the other plants I’ve started will turn out to be. If they’re mostly male I’ll try using a male from another cultivar next year, hopefully break the chain if this is a tendency to throw off Y pollen.
 

ComfortCreator

Well-Known Member
I have degrees in statistics which is why I posted the %.

No statistical conclusions can be made by sowing seeds and observing results. We are talking about billions of seeds and the distribution of this kind of event is "normal" and follows your classic bell curve.

There IS a reason they sell you packs of 10 regular seeds, and it is not because its an even round number.

Notice how fem seeds are sold 1ea, 3ea, 5ea, 6ea etc? Because you can assume most all will be female and buy what you want.

At 10 seeds the odds of being the poor sap that goes 0 for 10 is about 1 in every 1000. You own a reg seed shop, you EXPECT at least 1 of every 1000 packs sold to get a complaint of 0 females...they likely send a new pack. Many get only 1 or 2 females. 1 in 500 gets 1....1 in 250 gets 2....1 in 125 only get 3. But in a normal distribution the opposite is also true...someone else makes out like a bandit.

I know this is not a serious or deep discussion but it is important to not make any conclusions based on observations of small subsets of a larger population.

Do we need males is quite a thought and conversation. Nature very much needs diversity to avoid catastrophic loss of species due to lifes always seemingly random events. The mutations of genetics are partially what protects all species from dying off over time.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
Ive never witnessed any tendency or observation towards male or female ever, its completely out of our hands in a way.

Those small growths should have trippled in size by now, if they are still tiny looking you need to find the next set of preflowers as these wont develop any more.

I hope you might have found more pistols maybe as well.
They’re all still looking male to me, but taking the photos is damn near impossible. They really clearly have a round spade-like shape to them in real life, but the photos just turn out super blurry. I’m pretty sure my initial judgment of 6/7 males is still correct.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
I have degrees in statistics which is why I posted the %.

No statistical conclusions can be made by sowing seeds and observing results. We are talking about billions of seeds and the distribution of this kind of event is "normal" and follows your classic bell curve.

There IS a reason they sell you packs of 10 regular seeds, and it is not because its an even round number.

Notice how fem seeds are sold 1ea, 3ea, 5ea, 6ea etc? Because you can assume most all will be female and buy what you want.

At 10 seeds the odds of being the poor sap that goes 0 for 10 is about 1 in every 1000. You own a reg seed shop, you EXPECT at least 1 of every 1000 packs sold to get a complaint of 0 females...they likely send a new pack. Many get only 1 or 2 females. 1 in 500 gets 1....1 in 250 gets 2....1 in 125 only get 3. But in a normal distribution the opposite is also true...someone else makes out like a bandit.

I know this is not a serious or deep discussion but it is important to not make any conclusions based on observations of small subsets of a larger population.

Do we need males is quite a thought and conversation. Nature very much needs diversity to avoid catastrophic loss of species due to lifes always seemingly random events. The mutations of genetics are partially what protects all species from dying off over time.
Yeah, I don’t mind having some males, I just wanted more than 1 female to choose from for breeding purposes. I will probably just choose the best of the 6 males and toss the rest or make tea out of them or some shit. I hate wasting anything, LOL.
I’ve got another set of 6 plants that are two weeks younger and should have preflowers soon. If those are mostly male, I will suspect more strongly that it’s more than just bad luck and the male I used for pollination has a tendency toward Y pollen.
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
A spade is a calyx not a pollen sac, thats more a rugby ball shape with seams down the side.




They’re all still looking male to me, but taking the photos is damn near impossible. They really clearly have a round spade-like shape to them in real life, but the photos just turn out super blurry. I’m pretty sure my initial judgment of 6/7 males is still correct.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
A spade is a calyx not a pollen sac, thats more a rugby ball shape with seams down the side.
But they’re rounder than they are round and still not a single pistil, other than the one I am sure is female. It’s fine, I won’t jump the gun, though I am ready to start culling down.
 

2Hearts

Well-Known Member
But they’re rounder than they are round and still not a single pistil, other than the one I am sure is female. It’s fine, I won’t jump the gun, though I am ready to start culling down.
Its because they are too early to grow properly why they aborted and arent growing.

You can google up plenty of fem seeds that did the same, threw the same spades and growers panicked they were males only to later find out they were females.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
Its because they are too early to grow properly why they aborted and arent growing.

You can google up plenty of fem seeds that did the same, threw the same spades and growers panicked they were males only to later find out they were females.
I hope you’re right but I’m not optimistic. Just in case, I’ll post photos again before I start culling them.
 

Mrs. Weedstein

Well-Known Member
Ok, so I didn’t feel like getting down on all fours and crawling around under the lights again, trying to get my stupid camera to focus. However, this photo is representative of what I’m seeing on all 6 plants previously identified as male. If you guys tell me this isn’t pretty clearly a male, I am going to start thinking you’re pulling my leg:

99AA3EEC-56AE-4017-9524-4E72C487747E.jpeg

Meanwhile, the one I previously identified as female has got pistils all over the place, while none of the others do. I think it’s safe to start culling, no?
 
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