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Not the usual analysis.
I've sitting at work (doing stats research) and occasionally peaking at my PDF of Ultimate Combat and it made me want to find a way to plot all the classes nicely in 2d and see if I could learn anything new about them.
I didn't, but I DID make this fun little image.
http://s1.postimage.org/uv4bxyh0/PFClasses_PCA.jpg
I made a matrix to represent the 19 classes and their alternate classes, then trimmed off the Ninja and Antipaladin because, under the variables I used, they are exactly the same as the Rogue and Paladin, respectively.
The plot is a scatter diagram of a principal component analysis of the classes. Essentially, you can think of each arrow as it's own axis, with positive in the direction of the arrow, and with that axis scaled according to how big the arrow is. So, for example, BAB is a plays a large role in how the points are organized, and the Fighter is very far in the direction of the BAB arrow, while the Wizard is basically opposite.
Magic.Type is Arcane vs. Divine casting (positive toward Arcane), and Spell.Casting is prepared vs. spontaneous casting (positive toward prepared).
The Alchemist has covered up the Magus, the Cavalier the Fighter, and the Spell.Casting arrow the Cleric, so they're not missing, just sort of blocked.
If anyone wants to see the scheme I had for enumerating each trait let me know; otherwise, just enjoy the graphic.
Also, if anyone out there has a big chart comparing the classes made of (mostly) continuous variables, I'd enjoy messing around with it.
The plot was made with the ade4 package in R.
-Drillboss
