Comments on: How tall will your children be?

By: razib

razib — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:33:09 +0000

I am confused as to why the mean height of the population accounts for 20% of the predicted height of the child
environmental noise is equally distributed across the population. you inherit genes from your parents, not environmental noise.

By: adina

adina — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 05:32:34 +0000

I am confused as to why the mean height of the population accounts for 20% of the predicted height of the child. According to that calculation, a family with tall genes, a plentiful environment, and short “neighbors”, would be expected to have shorter kids than a family with tall genes, a relatively scarce environment, and tall “neighbors” (although the latter population would presumably be shorter than their potential height).

By: razib

razib — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:28:17 +0000

Of course, if genetics nerds like me are using embryo selection to bias results in 10 years, that changes some of these figures
yes. though with height the genetic architecture matters. unfortunately we haven’t found big QTLs, which means you need to know a lot about the details. embryo selection will be much easier for skin color, which i believe dark skinned populations which value light skin will be doing pretty soon (eg, south asians).
if the data on wiki is to be believed have you noticed that most of the variation in human height is in males not women, it seems women vary little from nation to nation.
i have no strong opinions on this, but i would bet that worse nutrition might matter a lot for sexual dimorphism. there are evolutionary reasons to assume that the ratio in size between sexes shouldn’t be that diff. from pop to pop.

By: Cogsys

Cogsys — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 06:21:10 +0000

Of course, if genetics nerds like me are using embryo selection to bias results in 10 years, that changes some of these figures

By: LongMa

LongMa — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:49:57 +0000

This is quite interesting. I’m 6’2.5″, so about 190cm, my wife is 5’4″ or 163cm.
My wife is Japanese (born in Japan) where she is more than a standard deviation above normal height, at least I read the average height for a woman is 5’2″. Her sisters are both 5’5″, but my wife was the only one who has serious childhood illness, I think this may have cause the variation seen. Her father is not tall, but his sister is (about 5’7″…huge for a Japanese woman) which is about the same height as my father-in-law (her brother)…he also suffered illness as a child though, right after WWII. Her mother is about 5’2″ (average for Japanese women today, but in her generation she is slightly tall).
My mother was 5’7″, my father 6 foot.
So we often try to figure out how tall our children might be. Being I’m lean and tall it is often hard to find pants, so I always hoped if I had a son he would have a shoe size a size smaller (13 for me) and legs a size smaller (35 inch for me).
By your estimates, I can expect our daughter to be about 5’5 – 5’7 and our son to be 6’0-6’1?
hmmm.
Razib:
if the data on wiki is to be believed have you noticed that most of the variation in human height is in males not women, it seems women vary little from nation to nation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Human_height#Average_adult_height_around_the_world

By: agnostic

agnostic — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 19:48:30 +0000

With any luck, 5’1 – 5’2 for my daughters, and 5’7 – 5’8 for my sons.