It is an interesting topic. I would think it's not too difficult to come up with a statistical approach. Wikipedia is an excellent source for data points. World, Continent, and country populations in particular times. There are many genealogy sites about towns and such, giving populations at certain times. Town histories are usually a good place to search for statistical data values. US censuses online are good means of extracting numbers from for surnames, even by localities. Mortality schedules for different periods, and modern occurrences of names could be used to back-propogate numbers alive at any given time in history, along with average birth rates. It would certainly be prone to some variation, depending on the quality of the data going in. Might need to do some level of numerical analysis on some of the data and equations. On the subject of family lore, Oh where to begin? Perhaps with my mother and her stories. Even on her name and her siblings. Even in the face of officially stamped and sealed legal documents. Or perhaps my lying gr-grandmother. Lying to NYC official clerks, no less! Saying she was 19 at the time of her legitimate child's birth. LL,POF. Yet her birth certificate says she was 17. I have never found a marriage certificate, but there were two children from this union. Have not yet found a death certificate for wife #2 either. Although, child #2 was born in wife #1's hometown, hundreds of miles from where her sister, mother, or father were born. Which proves nothing except he might have been very bold and brazen. Hmmm, no bold and brazen folks in our family. There may be quite the story or skeleton in there somewhere. Then of course, there is my uncle, who looked nothing like any member of the family (big and very tall). Who just happened to be the Lindbergh baby. Which is interesting, because it's very possible, that one of my uncle's uncles was dating a maid in the Lindbergh house (based on my research, q.v. "The Hand of Hauptman", autographed original printing). Then there is a hint to some other incident involving a gun in the family in relation to the Lindbergh story, which no one will tell me about. But that's all just the tips of the icebergs floating in the "Sea of me Family's Lore". But the truth is interesting too, one of my gr...grfathers was a "Wolf Hunter". What an interesting man he must have been. My gr...gr-Aunt the Witch. A sad story there. Take some Hessians on one side of the RW, add Patriots on the other side, mix in a few Tories that fled to Canada and stir gently. Brian On Mon, March 14, 2011 4:42 pm, Jerome Dittman wrote: > Charles > > Google the subject of genealogy mathematics, or similar terms. while doing > searches of my own suing Google, I remember that subject being mentioned a > number of times. > > Jerry Dittman > Boonsboro, MD >