"Old Techniques for New Times": the RMaCzek package for producing Czekanowski's Diagrams

TL;DR

The paper introduces the RMaCzek package in R for creating Czekanowski's diagrams, allowing flexible seriation and distance methods, demonstrated through diverse case studies.

Contribution

It provides an R implementation of Czekanowski's diagram with customizable seriation and distance methods, expanding its applicability.

Findings

Successfully applied to anthropological, socio-economic, and phylogenetic data

Demonstrates flexibility with different seriation and distance methods

Enables visualization of complex relational data

Abstract

Inspired by the MaCzek Visual Basic program we provide an R package, RMaCzek, that produces Czekanowski's diagram. Our package permits any seriation and distance method the user provides. In this paper we focus on the OLO and QAP_2SUM methods from the seriation package. We illustrate the possibilities of our package with three anthropological studies, one socio-economical one and a phylogenetically motivated simulation study.