Differing Methodologies in Computing for Smith's Mean Measure of Divergence Between Chinese and Western Literature

Summary

There is growing international interest in Chinese archaeological research, which establishes a precedent to evaluate the current methods used by local scholars. In terms of Smith’s Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD), which is used to estimate biological distances between groups, majority of recent Chinese publications have used the Grewal-Smith angular transformation method with Bartlett’s correction and an MMD formula with the correction factor 1/n_ik +1/n_jk. Most MMD studies in English literature have moved to the Freeman-Tukey transformation and an adjusted 1/(n_ik+1/2)+1/(n_jk+1/2) correction factor. The goals of this paper were to assess the potential differences between the two methods using raw data from actual Chinese publications. It was found that although not exactly the same, both methods are similar enough that compatibility between Chinese and Western research may still be feasible. However, it is recommended that the latter method be used for small sample sizes, and that statistical tests of significance be standard practice in the future.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage