Curious behavior?

[Stone_Fly]

I was out on Saturday and finally caught some trout this year. After four nice greater than legal size brook trout, it struck me that all four fish were males. I didn't catch any females until the sun was behind the clouds and the day cooled.
I'm wondering if anyone else has ever seen this, or if it is simply one of those anomalies that can't be explained.
Mike, have you ever caught all one sex during your early season surveys? I'm thinking it may be a migrationoffish out of a reservoir, and that the males come out of the reservoir first. The water temperature was fairly constant on Saturday.

 

[pete41]

I don't know the answer but that is one truly beautiful question any way you look at it.lol

 

[JackM]

I think every fish you catch has a 1 in 2 chance of being male. Try flipping a coin over and over. You will notice some strings of heads or tails only. You were probably on a "streak."

After about 15 flips, I produced 4 heads in a row....

 

[albatross]

If the population is evenly divided between male and female and both sexes are equally likely to be caught, then the probability that your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th fish will match the sex of your 1st fish is 12.5% (1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2). I'd say a chance run of males is the most likely explanation.

 

[vern]

Could be hormonal.

 

[pcray1231]

albatross,

Yeah, but if you fish often enough, then the chances are you'll hit a streak sooner or later. And the final tally is still 4 fish of the same sex, so the number is actually 6.25%.

Which means, assuming no preference due to location or tactics, that in every 16 groups of 4 fish, one group is likely to be all of the same sex. Say you catch 200 fish of one species per year, you should get a dozen or so such streaks.

 

[Acristickid]

Can math explain everthing? I love engineers.

 

[albatross]

There are 16 possible gender sequences for 4 fish:
MMMM
MMMF
MMFM
MMFF
MFMM
MFMF
MFFM
MFFF
FMMM
FMMF
FMFM
FMFF
FFMM
FFMF
FFFM
FFFF

Two of these sequences have all 4 fish the same sex. 2/16 = 1/8 = 12.5%.

And yes, math can explain most everything. Its not so good with the metaphysical.

 

[Acristickid]

Ha very good.

 

[JustFish]

Albatross,

I saw a show on the history channel about a guy the government is using to help with strategies through mathematics. Pretty interesting......math was never my strong point.

 

[jayL]

acristickid wrote:
Can math explain everthing? I love engineers.

I think so, but that's just part of my personality, I guess.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory
People laugh, but if you get addicted to poker like I did a few years ago, this stuff starts to pay dividends.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-theory

for starters...

 

[vern]

Seriously.
It could be just a difference in the behavior between the sexes.
Unless there is some migratory segregation going on, as you suggest, that would have males occupy the pool of concern (such as is probably going on right now with white bass in some of the rivers feeding reservoirs in the South), I would guess both sexes are present in the pool, though not necessarily in the same numbers and not necessarily in the same locations.

 

[jayL]

vern wrote:
Seriously.
It could be just a difference in the behavior between the sexes.
Unless there is some migratory segregation going on, as you suggest, that would have males occupy the pool of concern (such as is probably going on right now with white bass in some of the rivers feeding reservoirs in the South), I would guess both sexes are present in the pool, though not necessarily in the same numbers and not necessarily in the same locations.

I'll go with that.

 

[vern]

Numbers don't explain, people do.
Numbers can help understand, numbers can help predict (especially in a limited variable/outcome scenario, such as card games), but they never explain.

E.G., a person with whom I once worked was in a fist-pounding, name-calling outrage one day because the reported stream lengths from DEP were different than previous DEP stream length reports.

After his rant, it still took a while for it to set in, but it was explained to him that rainfall amounts and patterns and uses change over time, stream channels change, etc., and thus stream lengths very understandibly can be expected to change over time.

Numbers didn't explain that.

Numbers can't explain him, except someone took x-amount of dollars and gave him 1 college degree.

 

[jayL]

vern wrote:
Numbers don't explain, people do.
Numbers can help understand, numbers can help predict (especially in a limited variable/outcome scenario, such as card games), but they never explain.

E.G., a person with whom I once worked was in a fist-pounding, name-calling outrage one day because the reported stream lengths from DEP were different than previous DEP stream length reports.

After his rant, it still took a while for it to set in, but it was explained to him that rainfall amounts and patterns and uses change over time, stream channels change, etc., and thus stream lengths very understandibly can be expected to change over time.

Numbers didn't explain that.

Numbers can't explain him, except someone took x-amount of dollars and gave him 1 college degree.

People model numbers, and use them to explain things. I agree that the human aspect is necessary, but math is the most rudimentary of the sciences, and is present in some form in any valid explanation that I've seen. There are surely models, though maybe highly complex, to describe the scenario you've mentioned.

 

[vern]

There is only one. Everything else is a fraction.

 

[JackM]

albatross wrote:
....math can explain most everything. Its not so good with the metaphysical.

Which is why it invented "infinity."

 

[jayL]

JackM wrote:

albatross wrote:
....math can explain most everything. Its not so good with the metaphysical.

Which is why it invented "infinity."

Yeah, but you can't get there. You can only look like you're going to. That's still enough to be useful.

Luckily for math, the metaphysical holds the burden of proof, not the other way around.

 

[tomgamber]

I understand what the metallurgist is trying to say but I think I'll go with the PHD statistician.

 

[albatross]

Vern wrote

Numbers don't explain, people do.
Numbers can help understand, numbers can help predict (especially in a limited variable/outcome scenario, such as card games), but they never explain.

People make up explanations (thoeries in science), numbers (data in science) are used to test the explanations. An explanation is just an opinion untill it is tested. Many of the explanations people come up with are hogwash. Numbers can often demonstrate this very quickly.