In article "John Knight" <jwknight at polbox.com> writes:
<
<"Bob LeChevalier" <lojbab at lojban.org> wrote in message
<news:1f55mukbu39srm1uuq3rdqnke33pa3ah9q at 4ax.com...
{..}
<> >How many more? The factorial of 170 is 7.3 x 10^306.
<>
<> Nonsense as usual. There would not be more breeds than there are
<> dogs, and dog breeding is anything but random.
<
<The POINT is exactly that! Dog breeding is not random. And now we have to
<explain to you what "factorial" means? If dog breeding WAS random, and if
<there are 170 different breeds, then the potentional number of combinations
<between all these breeds is 7.3 x 10^306.
<
<Please don't say you don't know what a "factorial" is.
I do. It's that little button on your calculator you constantly
mis-apply.
The number of unique pairs of 170 objects is
(170 * 169) / 2, or about 14,000. You're only off by
three hundred orders of magnitude or so, which is not all
that unusual.
All of which is irrelevant, because "breed" is a purely human
construct, just like "good" poker hands and "bad" poker hands.
When two breeds mate, they do not produce a new breed, unless
the AKC says they did. They produce mutts, and no one keeps
track of the "breeds" of mutt.
-- cary
