Empirical test of relative support
A ternary diagram is used to illustrate which distributions are most consistent with the tree and animal species inventories. The saturated model is used as a baseline. For each inventory, the LL of each distribution is subtracted from the LL for the saturated model and the difference is exponentiated to produce a relative weight. For example, if the saturated model LL is 10 and the log series LL is 8, the weight is exp(2) = 7.39. The weights are used to generate x -ycoordinates in a ternary diagram with the standard equation: x = 0.5 (2 wo + wl)/(wo + wl + we) where wo, wl, and we are the weights for the odds, log series, and expe distributions; andy = 30.5/2 wl/(wo + wl + we).