Abstract
THE use of ‘similarity’ methods of hierarchical classification in numerical taxonomy is now well-established, and is particularly associated with the successful studies of Sneath et al.1–3. In these methods individuals or groups are successively united in larger groups to form a hierarchy or ‘family tree’, the aim being to unite the most ‘similar’ individuals or groups first. Various coefficients of similarity have been proposed, some of which are discussed by Dagnelie4, but they are usually closely related to the Euclidean distance between individuals (or between centroids of groups) plotted in an N-dimensional space where the jth co-ordinate for an individual is 1 if he possesses the jth of the N attributes considered, and 0 if he lacks it.
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References
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WILLIAMS, W., DALE, M. & MACNAUGHTON-SMITH, P. An Objective Method of Weighting in Similarity Analysis. Nature 201, 426 (1964). https://doi.org/10.1038/201426a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/201426a0
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