2) The section on DNA in the eugenics guide is a little misleading, in particular this part: "It can be assumed that the worst of the congenital traits only become common when many letters of DNA are shared, while the most positive congenital traits are at the other end of the spectrum.
As every character has eleven letters of DNA, it is reasonable to assume that five are taken from the father, five from the mother, and one is random."
Both of these assumptions are incorrect, or at least in need of qualification. Below is the DNA for 3 parent-child groups. The first 2 children are geniuses; the third is inbred. Between the parents and the child, I've marked where each letter in the child's DNA comes from. Letters passed from the mother to the child are marked |, from the father to the child +, from both parents with *, and random letters are indicated by a blank.
Code:
lcnmdgkkpaf mother
ioejdhgkenp father
+ +|*+|* |+
ijejdhkkmap genius
mjpdmkihmgm mother
ojadjkhmanj father
+*+*|*+ |||
ojajmkhamgm genius
lcnmdgkkpaf mother
ljofnhekpgd father
* +|+||**||
loomngkkpaf inbred abomination
We see the first child has 2 random letters, 3 maternal letters, 4 paternal letters, and 2 common letters; the second child has 1 random letter, 4 maternal letters, 3 paternal letters, and 3 common letters; the third has 1 random letter, 5 maternal letters, 2 paternal letters, and 3 common ones.
The first example shows that DNA is not simply 5 from each parent and 1 random letter. Perhaps that is the norm, but in some cases there can be multiple random letters. I've also seen cases where there is no clearly random letter, although this of course could just be chance (the random letter being the same as one of the parents). I have not seen any cases of more than 2 random letters, or cases where one parent contributed more than 5 letters.
