[Taxacom] sloppy cladistic analyses

[Stephen Thorpe]

I think Grehan is talking about character weighting, in essence .. are you John, my friend?

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From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of John Grehan [jgrehan at sciencebuff.org]
Sent: Thursday, 4 February 2010 3:56 p.m.
To: Taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] sloppy cladistic analyses

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jason Mate


"...'law of large numbers' that overrules the 'law of shared derived
characters'..." They are not laws, they are more like guidelines...
Seriously, the old quality versus quantity?

In a way yes. The 'law of large numbers' characterizes the perspectives
of many systematists, particularly molecularists, but also many
morphologists, that large numbers of characters somehow gives one more
likelihood of the right answer. I coined the 'law of shared derived
characters' a bit facetiously as a contrast in that its not a matter of
simply having a 'lot' of characters but having informative characters.

John Grehan

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