On 2007-11-28, Robert Melson wrote: > In article <6rt025-i8c.ln1@news.ducksburg.com>, > Adam Funk <a24061@ducksburg.com> writes: >> In the late 1970s or early 80s in either "Mathematical Games" or >> "Metamagical Themas" (Martin Gardner's and Douglas Hofstadter's >> columns, respectively) in _Scientific American_, there was an >> algorithm for a computer simulation of the quantities of surnames in a >> population over generations (iterations), based on (I think) the >> frequency distribution of numbers of sons in the late Middle Ages. >> >> In this simulation, if you started with 1000 different surnames, a lot >> of them would simply disappear and a few would become and remain >> common. This was supposed to explain why various languages/countries >> all have some especially common surnames but equivalent names (e.g. >> Smith and Schmidt) are not equally distributed between countries. >> >> If I can track down a reference to the precise article, I'll post it. > Go to the archives for alt.genealogy or soc.genealogy.computing - > I honestly don't remember which - where there's a recent thread > initiated by a fellow named Ray Lopez, on just this topic. He's > written a program to simulate the disappearance of names in a > population and would, I'm sure, be more than happy to explain > both his program and the statistics of it all. By sheer luck I found the article I was thinking about: A. K. Dewdney, "Computer recreations" (a regular column at that time, which I think came either after Hofstadter's or between Gardner's and Hofstadter's), "Branching phylogenetics of the Paleozoic and the fortunes of English family names", _Scientific American_, May 1986. Dewdney credits the surname simulation to Christopher M Sturges and Brian C Haggatt. -- A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?