[thaumasiotes]

> My 16 year old son is flying through 5feet 10inches in height. I'm 5-7, and my wife is 5-10. He obviously gets his 'tall' from his mom.

The contribution of tall mothers to height in sons is deceptively large, because women are quite short compared to men. Using your figures and some stylized assumptions:

American mean male height 70 inches.

American mean female height 66 inches.

Father 67 inches = 70-3

Mother 70 inches = 66+4

Heritability of height 0.8

Expected value of son's height is (70) + ((-3+4)/2)*0.8, or 70.4 inches, taller than either parent.

Reversing the heights of the parents gives the same result for the son (it's a substitution of (0+1) for (-3+4)), but people are much less surprised by a son who's slightly taller than his average father than they are by a son who's much taller than his father and even taller than his very tall mother.

[thaumasiotes]

Followup comment: this assumes that the standard deviation of height is equal for males and females. In reality, the male deviation is larger, which means that an inch of mother height contributes more than an inch of father height does.