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Equation 21 · Part 1 · Einstein's Random Walk and the Mathematics of Genetic Drift

Symbol phi

∂ϕ(p,t)∂t=12 ∂2∂p2[V(p) ϕ(p,t)],V(p)=p(1−p)2N(Kimura, 1955/1962)\frac{\partial \phi(p,t)}{\partial t} = \frac{1}{2}\,\frac{\partial^{2}}{\partial p^{2}}\Big[V(p)\,\phi(p,t)\Big], \quad V(p) = \frac{p(1-p)}{2N} \qquad \text{(Kimura, 1955/1962)}
ϕ\phi

What this part means

phi occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.

Its job in the formula

phi occurs above the fraction bar. The numerator is divided by the entire denominator below it.

The passage around this formula

Motoo Kimura, at Japan’s National Institute of Genetics, made the borrowing exact rather than approximate. His 1955 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences solved the full time-dependent diffusion equation derived from the Wright-Fisher model, recovering not just the eventual resting distribution of an allele’s frequency but its whole transient shape as it evolves generation by generation [ 6 ] . His 1962 paper in Genetics then posed the general fixation problem as a diffusion boundary-value equation and named the lineage precisely: the question of a mutant gene’s ultimate fate was “first treated quantitatively by Fisher (1922),” with “equivalent results” reached…

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Learn the underlying idea

A function assigns an output to each allowed input. The expression f(x) means “apply f to x”.

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Sources cited in the surrounding passage

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