section_path: Phenetics
section_name: Phenetics
paragraph_text: Phenetics
  
  In phenetics, also known as taximetrics, or numerical taxonomy, organisms are classified based on overall similarity, regardless of their phylogeny or evolutionary relationships. It results in a measure of hypergeometric "distance" between taxa. Phenetic methods have become relatively rare in modern times, largely superseded by cladistic analyses, as phenetic methods do not distinguish shared ancestral (or plesiomorphic) traits from shared derived (or apomorphic) traits. However, certain phenetic methods, such as neighbor joining, have persisted, as rapid estimators of relationships when more advanced methods (such as Bayesian inference) are too computationally expensive.