[R] daisy() for gower distance calculation

[Tyler Smith]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2006 at 10:16:07AM +0100, Martin Maechler wrote:
> 
> - daisy() is in Recommended package cluster which is part of every
> 	R installation, so why not try it first?

This has been suggested to me before, and I really should investigate
this more fully. My reluctance is due entirely to social
factors. Plant taxonomists in general (at least the ones on my
committee!) are familiar with the Gower coefficient, and it is well
described in Legendre and Legendre 1998, a reference that is also well
known to my peers - especially those of us in Montreal. Using daisy
would mean finding and working through one more reference to justify
another departure from standard (if dated) practice.

It would be quite useful to do a rewrite of Sneath and Sokal's
Numerical Taxonomy (1973), substituting the 'R best-practice' approach
for their suggested methods. Does such a thing exist already? Maybe
that could be a postdoc project!

Cheers,

Tyler