The Single Helix

"One single star of the Aquila galaxy, ten thousand light years from home, has a cloud of ethyl alcohol around it big enough to provide a bottle of the finest Johnny Walker for every person on Earth every day for the next five thousand billion years."

This consoling thought comes from Steve Jones' "The Single Helix" (Little Brown 2005). Whatever the scientific equivalent of illiterate and innumerate is, I'm it. This book is full of many excellent and unfamiliar - to me - scientific thoughts, such as Zipf's law. I paraphrase, obviously, but it applies to the size of either animals or businesses - and many other things - and the frequency of their occurrence: the smaller they are (insects, self-employed), the more there will be of them - the larger (elephants, multi-nationals), the fewer. The relationship is constant in a huge range of examples, with notable exceptions. There are far more - relatively large - farm animals than there should be for their size, and about ten thousand times as many humans as there should be according to Zipf. A reckoning awaits?

On voting systems, Jones tells us that the Mathematical Association of America and the American Statistical Association, packed with people who understand numbers better than most of us, use an approval system of voting to elect their committees. This involves voting for as many candidates as you like - those you approve of, that is - with each vote carrying the same weight. The result is, statistically, the nearest to the concensus view. Fantastic! Say goodbye to negative voting and/or voting for someone for fear of another getting in. Everyone votes for the people they think are ok, and the result is a reflection of this. No votes wasted. Simple and much easier to understand than single transferable votes. Will someone please tell the electoral reform society? In fact, I think I'll right to Dr. Ken Ritchie tonight.