[Taxacom] Evolution of human-ape relationships, remains open for investigation

[John Grehan]

"Binary transformation series, whether restricted in a way that one
character state is present in the ingroup and absent in the outgroup or
not, contribute the same number of steps to a parsimony analysis
independently of the polarity assessment so identifying polarity in this
characters prior to the analysis is irrelevant."

But an algorithm cannot distinguish derived states if they are not
specified. If one mixes in non-derived states and codes them as such,
then no problem - but then why bother including them?

John Grehan


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