[btilly]

This is indeed a strange and worrying phenomena. I am in fact aware of cases where a student has managed to lose 3 or more grandmothers while pursuing an undergraduate degree. This leaves the student with a negative number of grandmothers. The underlying mechanisms allowing this is highly mysterious and is certainly deserving of further research.

[waiwai933]

The author addresses this point, and how it is possible, but why so many grandfathers choose to remarry so quickly is still mysterious.

> As more people go to college, their families find that, for safety reasons, it is wise to increase the number of grandmothers per family. Since there is currently no biological way of doing so (though another grant proposal in preparation will ask for funds to look into the prospect of cloning grandmothers, using modern genetic engineering techniques), the families must resort to in creasing the pool by divorce and remarriage.

[dudus]

Which Author?

Although it seems to be stored on Dongwon Lee user dir, he states this document was written by "Mike Adams". I couldn't find this Mike Adams and I find it a little disturbing to read a Study that has no references, no date and the Author doesn't bother about writing his own name in it.

[Steuard]

As I said below, my tentative assumption is that this article is a humor piece, not based on actual data.

[jholman]

TFA covers this, actually. Divorce and remarriage can help a student have more grandmothers. Also consider the future possibility of cloning grandmothers.

[arbuge]

My hypothesis is that there are students out there with just a single grandmother to balance out the 3 grandmothers cases. This leads us to deduce the general Law of Conservation of Grandmothers.

More serious note: I have a hard time believing this from my anectodal evidence - my grandmothers were a couple of loving but otherwise spaced-out individuals who were only vaguely aware that I was in school for something at any point. The timing of my exams was not within their remotest knowledge.

[D_Alex]

We might also be able to solve the world hunger by giving heaps of homework to mediocre students. Valuable nutrients which now end up in dog food could be made available to the starving masses.

[bnycum]

I had "3" grandmothers. One was a step grandmother from remarriage. Shockingly they all died before big events in school. Never used it as an excuse though.

[dredmorbius]

As a friend of mine once commented, "I get along well with most of my parents".

Perhaps there are recent advances in sexual reproduction leading to greater allele recombination at a time of crisis for our species.

[cafard]

Will higher education help to solve our Medicare/Medicaid problems?