Biology › Section F · Meiosis and Mendelian heredity › Topic F.3

Mendel's experiments and probability

Before anyone knew what a gene was, a monk with 30,000 pea plants cracked heredity open. Gregor Mendel chose the right organism, asked the right questions, and - crucially - did the math. His crosses revealed dominant and recessive traits, and the laws of probability let him predict offspring before a single seed was planted.

In this topic

  • The monk who counted
  • Why the garden pea
  • P, F1, F2: the generations
  • What the crosses showed
  • Reading the hidden pattern
  • Probability: the arithmetic of chance
  • The product rule: AND means multiply
  • The sum rule: OR means add
  • Worked example: predict the F1
  • Worked example: a dihybrid probability
  • Common mistakes to avoid
  • Key takeaways

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