[R] why is adnonis function called adonis {packagevegan}

[Jari Oksanen]

stvienna wiener <stvienna <at> gmail.com> writes:

> 
> I used google and looked at the documentation to find out why the
> ADONIS function
> is called adonis (in the vegan package).
> 
Because it is ANOSIM resurrected?

The background is that vegan already had function anosim() which should come
from ANOSIM = Analysis of Similarities. However, like all R stuff, it actually
used dissimilarities and so should be called anodis() to be linguistically
correct. When Hank Stevens started to write current adonis(), the first working
versions were called anodis(), but that was that was confusing when anosim()
alreaded handled dissimilarities. So there was a nifty swap of letters to give
us adonis(), and that stuck.

By the way, Peter Solymos wrote a metafunction using adonis(), and he called
that function persephone(). We haven't released that (yet).

Cheap thrills, but thrills anyway (and I can't afford expensive thrills). 

> I am writing a document and would like to include a
> abbreviation list (similar to "ANOSIM = Analysis of Similarities").
> 
Just go on. However, the name of the function is not necessarily the acronym of
the method.

Cheers, Jari Oksanen