title: A dimensionless fit measure for phylogenetic distance trees.
abstract: We present a dimensionless fit index for phylogenetic trees that have been constructed from distance matrices. It is designed to measure the quality of the fit of the data to a tree in absolute terms, independent of linear transformations on the distance matrix. The index can be used as an absolute measure to evaluate how well a set of data fits to a tree, or as a relative measure to compare different methods that are expected to produce the same tree. The usefulness of the index is demonstrated in three examples.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Zurich, 8092, Switzerland. mgil@inf.ethz.ch
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Gil
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dessimoz
authors.forename: Gaston H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Gonnet
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D005075:Biological Evolution; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009716:Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted; D010802:Phylogeny