Utilizing C# to Create a Ternary Graph Plotting Program with Rigorous Statistical Anaylsis with an Analysis of Holocene Sands
Luke Zimmerman
MS Candidate
Advisor: Dr. Dave Kimbrough
Thursday, May 19th, 2016
CSL 422 – 1 pm
watch Luke’s defense
Abstract
Ternary Graph, a program written in the C# language, is a tool for plotting compositional data, geometric mean and 90%, 95%, and 99% confidence limits. Ternary Graph allows the user to create, save, print, analyze and publish plots of compositional data in ternary space. Ternary Graph incorporates the additive logratio transformation introduced by J. Aitchison in 1986 to transform the restricted non-negative and closed sum values of compositional data to real space. This transformation allows the data to be treated in an appropriate statistical and mathematical fashion. A reevaluation of a published data set of Holocene sand is reevaluated and underscores the usefulness of Ternary Graph is such endeavors.