Abstract
A MEASURE of the extent to which an individual differs from the norm of a population, taking many attributes into account, would often be useful in numerical taxonomy. With metrical attributes, the distance in an attribute space between the point representing the individual and the centroid of the population would serve such a purpose1. Similar measures have been proposed for binary attributes, but no fully appropriate way of combining binary and metrical attributes has been proposed, and no suggestion has been made for the inclusion of ordered non-metrical attributes except by allotting arbitrary metrical equivalents to the class values. Significance tests for these distance measures have proved elusive except in the multivariate normal case; but a significance test is often required as a guide to taxonomic action. The index proposed here not only combines information from all types of attributes, but also provides a direct test of significance.
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References
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Goodall, D. W., Nature, 203, 1098 (1964).
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GOODALL, D. Deviant Index : a New Tool for Numerical Taxonomy. Nature 210, 216 (1966). https://doi.org/10.1038/210216a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/210216a0
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