In article <CquA2v.8A7 at zoo.toronto.edu>, mes at zoo.toronto.edu (Mark Siddall)
wrote:
> We call it cladistics or phylogentic systematics, and I don't
> know where you came up with the single-tree thing. Ever heard of
> multiple equally parsimonious trees?
Yes.
I was thinking of situations where there is in fact one single most
parsimonious tree. As I understand the debate, one either can consider
that tree to have a probability of effectively 100% (which I think is the
cladistics position) or try to assign it some other probability (which I
understand to be Dr. Felsenstein's position.)
Of course I may have gotten it wrong -- in fact cladistics may assign a
less-than-100% value to the probability of the most parsimonious tree, or
to the sum of probabilities of the equally most parsimonious trees...
Or the entire debate may be about something else altogether. <sigh>
--Erich Schwarz
