ViewPoint and ViewDist: utilities for rapid graphing of linkage distributions and identification of outliers

Abstract

ViewPoint and ViewDist are stand alone Java utilities designed to provide an interactive visual representation of data from files which may be created by the user or produced directly from analyses packages such as Mx. ViewPoint is designed for representation of linkage results and can be used for summarizing multiple univariate linkage results or providing detailed comparison of univariate and multivariate results, with optional dynamic sub-plots designed to display the QTL path coefficients at each marker. ViewDist is an easy to use distribution plotter designed for use with raw data or case-wise likelihood statistics. The utility can produce Q-Q plots (assuming either normal or chi(2)-distributions) and by allowing data to be read simultaneously from two files readily produces difference plots allowing comparison of the case-wise likelihood under two competing models.