Throw the Dice

Verse 1 — the machine
They told me A plus B equals C,
neat and tidy, settled in advance.
But the machine don't work that way, buddy —
two splices in, a random throw,
and here's your result, have fun, buddy.
The throw was never in their equation.
So I put it in mine.

Chorus
O equals S of A and B, times R, given Q.
The splice, the qualifications, and the throw.
R is never one and R is never zero,
always a surprise.
The surprise isn't a flaw in the machine.
The surprise IS the machine.

Verse 2 — the hair
Balding runs prominent in the family,
my dad is almost completely bald.
By their math, the son should follow.
But the machine dealt otherwise —
I lost a wig's worth undreading my hair
and my hair is still full.
Nobody ordered the hair.
The machine just dealt it.

Verse 3 — everybody all at once
One child, the surprise is in the room.
Everybody all at once, the throw averages out —
the average is blind, only the variance remembers.
Mean takes three, the variance takes the fourth,
Mendel, Hardy-Weinberg, recombination, heritability.
One equation, both ends, four theories.

Verse 4 — F-S-T
They measured the space between the peoples,
F-S-T, a fraction, five to fifteen in a hundred.
Eighty-five percent lives inside one town,
eight between the towns, six between the races.
The mean moves a little. The throw moves a lot.
The person is the draw, not the dot on the chart.

Verse 5 — the average hid it
They lumped the peoples into one big average,
and the numbers came back short — heterozygotes missing.
That's the Wahlund effect, the average hiding the structure,
the deficit giving it away.
And Edwards said count them all at once,
the small means stack up, the ancestry shows —
per locus the throw rules, across loci the means add.
Same machine, both ends again.

Chorus — the race equations
E of O differs a little from town to town,
that's F-S-T, five to fifteen in a hundred.
But the variance lives in the throw,
eighty-five in the room, six between the names.
The label can't predict the person.
The machine deals the individual — the label doesn't.

Bridge — the label
They tried to read a person off a label.
But eighty-five percent lives in the throw,
six percent between the races —
the draw is fourteen times bigger than the difference.
The machine deals the individual.
The label doesn't.

Outro
Two splices in, a random throw,
and here's your result — have fun, buddy.