Two-Way Indicator Species Analysis · applied indiscriminately

TWINSPANything

Feed it a quadrat of any things scored against any attributes. It divides, and divides again, and tells you which features cleave the world in two — then, where a thing won't commit, it writes cf. in the margin and lets the matter rest.

after M. O. Hill, TWINSPAN (Cornell, 1979 — Fortran, naturally) · in the spirit of Higgins & Knowles, “Computers for the Arts” (1970)
the quadrat below is laid in the spirit of Magalhães's Kwadraat-Blad 35 (1961) · it provokes thought, it does not provide answers

The Quadrat

things × attributes · score 0–9

≥1 ≥2 ≥3 ≥5
An empty moor. Lay a quadrat over it, and divide.

the grid behind is after Aloísio Magalhães, Typografische Analyse — Kwadraat-Blad 35, P. Brattinga / de Jong & Co., 1961: a grid dropped over van der Ast's flowers, 51 cells enlarged to the Ben Day dot. The first two-way analysis of a printed surface. We have only added the Fortran.

On staying on the peat: the analysis is real — reciprocal averaging to a first axis, a split at the centroid, indicator pseudospecies, recursion — but the scores in the presets are impressionistic, made for thinking-with, not citing.
A division is a hypothesis about structure, not a verdict on a thing. The cf. is the negative capability: a thing held in uncertainty without irritable reaching after fact & reason.
Three ferrets will never ordinate. That is the point of the ferrets.