Hello, I'm trying to take the correlation of two distance matrices and get the r2 value ex) Ndisc PS1 Ntet Nsito NcB NcA PS3 NcC NiB NiA PS1 0.08945 Ntet 0.08601 0.02020 Nsito 0.09361 0.02780 0.02260 NcB 0.09479 0.03258 0.02914 0.03674 NcA 0.09363 0.03142 0.02798 0.03558 0.02190 PS3 0.09145 0.02924 0.02580 0.03340 0.02446 0.02330 NcC 0.08919 0.02698 0.02354 0.03114 0.02220 0.02104 0.01670 NiB 0.09749 0.03802 0.03458 0.04218 0.04336 0.04220 0.04002 0.03776 NiA 0.09571 0.03624 0.03280 0.04040 0.04158 0.04042 0.03824 0.03598 0.02170 PS2 0.09234 0.03287 0.02943 0.03703 0.03821 0.03705 0.03487 0.03261 0.03289 0.03111 and Ndisc PS1 Ntet NcB NcA NcC PS3 Nsito PS2 NiB PS1 2.981494 Ntet 2.949046 1.003718 NcB 3.212256 1.266928 1.178326 NcA 3.531725 1.586397 1.497795 1.217055 NcC 3.111421 1.166093 1.077491 0.944637 1.264106 PS3 3.115273 1.169945 1.081343 1.000991 1.320460 0.900156 Nsito 2.994152 1.131330 1.098882 1.362092 1.681561 1.261257 1.265109 PS2 2.843805 1.228361 1.195913 1.459123 1.778592 1.358288 1.362140 1.241019 NiB 2.805537 1.375615 1.343167 1.606377 1.925846 1.505542 1.509394 1.388273 1.237926 NiA 2.752269 1.322347 1.289899 1.553109 1.872578 1.452274 1.456126 1.335005 1.184658 1.018210 The problem is that these matrices are the endpoint of an extensive simulation involving phylogenetic trees and the order of the columns and rows shifts around according to how they were ordered in the tree. I used cophenetic.phylo to get the distance matrix and now I need to find a way to reorder or sort the columns and rows such that the two matrices match and cor is taking the correlation of the corresponding column and row and not just the one in the same position. I don't want to sort the values in the columns and rows but the entire column and their associated rows. I've looked at order , sort, and match and can't figure out a way to do it based on the alphanumeric name of the columns. Does anyone have any suggestions? Sincerely, Betty -- Betty Gilbert lgilbert@berkeley.edu Taylor Lab Plant and Microbial Biology 321 Koshland Hall U.C. Berkeley Berkeley, Ca 94720 [[alternative HTML version deleted]]