Are chromosomes from each parent split between gametes with equal probability (esp. in humans)? I've recently read a little on Wikipedia about genetics, but I can't find a direct answer to this question. My rough understanding is this: * Both males and females have pairs of chromosomes, one copy from each parent * Both produce gametes (eggs in females, sperm in males) * The gamete is produced during something called 'meiosis' to take only one set of genes What I can't find an answer to though is whether that selection is completely random, such that every chromosome in a gamete has an equally likely chance of being taken from the male parent set and the female parent set. Another way of putting it, perhaps: Would the range of 100% male parent to 100% female parent chromosome selection in the gamete be a binomial distribution? My background is computing, so please assume very little knowledge of biology.

Other answers are correct in their own terms, but because of homologous recombination during meiosis, the idea of maternal and paternal chromosomes becomes meaningless. Any chromosome in a gamete will be a mosaic of the maternal and paternal versions. In this sense the chromosome is not the unit of inheritance.