Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
1709391 Applied Mathematics Letters 2009 4 Pages PDF
Abstract

We establish a log-supermodularity property for probability distributions on binary patterns observed at the tips of a tree that are generated under any 2-state Markov process. We illustrate the applicability of this result in phylogenetics by deriving an inequality relevant to estimating expected future phylogenetic diversity under a model of species extinction. In a further application of the log-supermodularity property, we derive a purely combinatorial inequality for the parsimony score of a binary character. The proofs of our results exploit two classical theorems in the combinatorics of finite sets.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Engineering Computational Mechanics
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