Striking a balance, weighting and Cladistics

[Curtis Clark]

At 12:28 AM 2/16/01, Gabriel A. Eickhoff wrote:
>Now, I imagine that you Curtis are a very likeable guy, and
>even with this students grade in mind, I think the student would still feel
>that Ken is more important than you. Reason out also that this is ideed the
>same context, just with a bias.

Exactly! I agree, although I would not call it "bias" unless it was used
out of context (e.g., "I am biased toward feathers as a putative homology
because they are so important an adaptation").

>Why then Curtis, if every homology is equally important, do we have
>weighting?

As someone else said, we have weighting because not every apparent homology
is a true homology. In an ideal world, we would weight every homology 1.0
and every homoplasy 0.0. Weighting is a game of "I'm halfway sure about
this one". But lacking any clear reproducible criteria for weighting (and
I'm talking about a priori in all of this), we find ourselves on the
slippery slope to subjectivity.


--
Curtis Clark                  http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/
Biological Sciences Department             Voice: (909) 869-4062
California State Polytechnic University      FAX: (909) 869-4078
Pomona CA 91768-4032  USA                  jcclark at csupomona.edu