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Re:Amazon Pip Horror Story by dekhn on Monday February 07, 2022 @11:33AM (#30247115)
I am not really disagreeing with you, but for a first order approximation, treating human height as a bunch of iids is the simplest approach. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41431-021-00836-7. "At the same time, it is well-understood that additivity of effects and normal distribution of residuals is only an approximation to the distribution of height in human populations. .... However, up until now, no evidence for non-additive genetic interactions was found for height [6, 18]. Moreover, if non-additive effects were to exist for polygenic traits, very large sample sizes would be required to detect them [9]."
Re:Amazon Pip Horror Story by graycat on Monday February 07, 2022 @10:11PM (#30254517)
> treating human height as a bunch of iids is the simplest approach.

Sounds fine.

If you treat heights as some i.i.d.s, then can use the central limit theorem to argue that in the limit for large samples (we get convergence in distribution) the probability density distribution of the sum of heights expressed as a z-score (mean 0, standard deviation 1) has Gaussian probability density distribution.

But that does not mean that the probability density distribution of heights is Gaussian. Indeed, if include both males and females, then for the density likely get two peaks instead of just one. If also include children, then get a left tail longer than the right one.

So, net, we cannot expect that heights are Gaussian. And we will have a tough time finding a large population that is Gaussian. z-scores in the limit for large samples Gaussian -- sure, can get that. A large population Gaussian, not much chance.