July 2004

By admin | July 1, 2004
  • FAQ on PATN updates added
  • PATN v3.01 released
  • You can now import data from DOS PATN using either the x.prm, x.dat, x.rlb and x.clb (binary) files or from an ‘archive’ file x.arc containing parameters, data, row and columns labels in ASCII format. This was a real “DUH!!!!”. Sorry guys – I hadn’t run DOS PATN for ages. Mia culpa. A good thing ones of the community sent me an e-mail. Just goes to show you – if something’s not right – please le me know!
  • A major revision of the Help file has been completed. There are images/screen shots for more than 70% of the help topics. New topics have been added, such as the analysis of larger datasets, random number seeds and more on the toolbars to name but a few. Extensive Browse Sequences have been added to enable the browsing of related topics or for reading the complete help text as a textbook.
  • The inbuilt logic for the default handling of larger datasets has changed. When a large dataset is detected, PATN will uncheck the running of pair-wise association (a new check box) and SSH, and select non-hierarchical clustering with an appropriate association measure (calculated as object to group centroid). These defaults can be overridden as required, but caution is required. An FAQ on large datasets has been added.
  • Links from PATN to the Web site and the PATN Discussion Forum have been added to the Help Menu.
  • An emf (enhanced metafile format) has been added to Save Image options. This format gives high resolution visuals and permits editing of graph elements.
  • Progress bars have been updated to better show the phase of analysis for larger datasets. For smaller datasets, these progress bars will operate so fast, you probably won’t see them. A cancel button has been added to progress bars to opt for an “Oops – I didn’t mean to do that!” for larger datasets on the options in PATN that could take a while (SSH and MCAO in particular).
  • The non-hierarchical algorithm has been rewritten to optimize speed and two stopping rules  implemented (maximum number of iterations, and a minimum number of object relocations between groups per iteration).
  • The View Menu has been re-designed to add and cluster similar Evaluation options together.
  • The term “Kruskal-Wallis” has been replaced by “box and whisker plots” in the View menu and other relevant areas of PATN and the documentation. The philosophy is that requesting box and whisker plots will generate group statistics of which the Kruskal-Wallis test is one.
  • The toolbars have been relabeled ‘standard’ and ‘PATN’. The standard toolbar is above the PATN toolbar, and contains buttons for file-level, Data Table manipulation, and the three main sub-components of PATN (transform/standardize, analyze and evaluate. The PATN toolbar contains the key View options of PATN. In both toolbars (and he View menu), the buttons have been re-ordered to better reflect the logic of PATN. The image on the button for View PCC is now two vectors, while MACO is the character “M” and ANOSIM the character “A”.
  • The Status Bar now displays the number of objects (rows) and variables (columns) within the Data Table. Very handy!
  • Annotation of the output for ANOSIM is more explicit.
  • The generation of a Data Table with uniform random variates now uses “Var” instead of “Attrib” as column labels.
  • A View PCC button has been added to the PATN toolbar and a parallel command to the View menu. This option will display the tabulated PCC results through the PCC TAB on the Data Table. Viewing the vectors can also be viewed through the Ordination Plot (right mouse button menu).
  • Box & Whisker toolbar button operates correctly when no evaluation has been run.  The generation of box and whisker plots is now consistent with PATN’s analysis philosophy.
  • If extrinsic variables are defined, and “All Evaluations” is checked on the Analysis options window, then ANOSIM, box and whisker plots, PCC and MCA are run for all extrinsic variables (automatically). If no extrinsic variables are defined and All Evaluations” is checked on the Analysis options window, then ANOSIM, box and whisker, PCC and MCAO are run for all intrinsic variables (automatically).
  • The format of the exported group statistics data now allows for better manipulation in MS Excel™.
  • View History now has a Clear Button.
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