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Equation 2 · Part 10 · Einstein's Random Walk and the Mathematics of Genetic Drift

Numerator: partial f(x,t)

∂f(x,t)∂t=D ∂2f(x,t)∂x2\frac{\partial f(x,t)}{\partial t} = D\,\frac{\partial^{2} f(x,t)}{\partial x^{2}}
∂f(x,t)\partial f(x,t)

What this part means

The complete quantity above the fraction bar.

Its job in the formula

partial f(x,t) occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.

The passage around this formula

Working through the statistical mechanics of a wall permeable to solvent but not to suspended particles, Einstein arrived at a differential equation for how the concentration f(x,t) of particles along one axis changes over time: ∂f(x,t)∂t=D ∂2f(x,t)∂x2\frac{\partial f(x,t)}{\partial t} = D\,\frac{\partial^{2} f(x,t)}{\partial x^{2}}. the diffusion equation, in a form still written the same way today [ 1 ] . Solving it for particles released from a point gives a spreading distribution whose variance grows linearly, not with the square root of time as a naive guess might suggest but as

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Learn the underlying idea

A fraction a/b means a divided by b. The top number is the numerator; the bottom number is the denominator, and it cannot be zero.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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