Educating Swamidass- Phylogentics

-
Too Funny. Joshua posted:

Phylogenetics does not work based on similarities.

Introduction to Phylogenetics says otherwise:

Phylogenetic relationship between organisms is given by the degree and kind of evolutionary distance. To understand this concept better, let us define taxonomy. Taxonomy is the science of naming, classifying and describing organisms. Taxonomists arrange the different organisms in taxa (groups). These are then further grouped together depending on biological similarities. This grouping of taxa reflects the degree of biological similarity. 

It goes on to say:

Two extensive groups of analyses exist to examine phylogenetic relationships: Phenetic methods and cladistic methods. Phenetic methods, or numerical taxonomy, use various measures of overall similarity for the ranking of species. They can use any number or type of characters, but the data has to be converted into a numerical value. The organisms are compared to each other for all of the characters and then the similarities are calculated. After this, the organisms are clustered based on the similarities.  

The interwebs is a great tool, Josh. All you have to do is figure out how to use it.

ETA- see synapomorphy