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Comment by maratumba | Hacker News Reader

Haven't actually read the study but not sure I understand your comment. Even if every village has only one birth, the probability of having no girls at random is 1/(2700) which seems practically impossible. Perhaps there is something else that made you response critically of their methods?

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Over 700 villages, all with a birth rate of about two births per 3 months, there might very well be 132 villages with no girls born, 140 villages with no boys born, and 428 villages with one boy and one girl born. It wouldn't be alarming at all.

But if these villages represent a contiguous area, then it is alarming. The article doesn't really give enough information to say anything about this really.

Data is from a single district, and then blocks. So blocks are contiguous. Analogous to say New York metro area, and then Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens etc.

He was saying that 132 villages out of 700 villages had no female babies.

> The 132 villages where no girls were born over three months have all been marked as part of a “red zone”, which means local data will be scrutinised more closely and health workers have been asked to be vigilant.

The "red zone" is not a single area, it's a black list.

There's just not enough information in the article for any of us to know. If every village had one birth, you'd expect half of them to have had 'only girls'. It's hard to believe it's that simple a case though. Some of the villages may have had a dozen or more births, we just don't know.

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