Talk:Maximum parsimony

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good article, anon, but I wish to improve it to clarify some points and possibly make it more accessible.

OLD: Maximum parsimony

Maximum parsimony is a simple but popular technique in bioinformatics to predict the best phylogenetic tree for an organism.

NEW: Introduction

Maximum parsimony is a simple but popular technique used in cladistics to predict an accurate phylogenetic tree for a set of taxa (commonly a set of species or reproductively-isolated populations of a single species.

Comments: The level 2 heading 'maximum parsimony' is redundant - have replaced with 'Introduction'. 'Bioinformatics' has been replaced with 'cladistics' because the former is more of a broad approach to biological research than a specific field of research. Have removed 'best' from introduction as this does not scientifically-describe the criteria for an optimal tree - 'accurate' is better. In addition, 'best' could be inferred as stating that MP is the best method to produce a tree when there is no consensus that any method is the best under all circumstances. Have also replaced 'organism' with 'set of taxa' and given two examples of appropriate sets to compare.

--ChrisJMoor 00:59, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There needs to be some mention of bootstrapping. Jim Bowery 18:57, 18 July 2005 (UTC)