T-pattern analysis

T-patterns
Timing and order are crucial to the effectiveness of nearly any kind of behavior, but they are hard to capture in statistics. Theme is a software package that was especially developed to deal with this challenge. Theme detects statistically significant time patterns (T-patterns) based on the timing of events relative to each other in the data which can give new insights into the structure of behavior. Most behavior is highly organized in time but can also be quite variable. Contrary to other methods, Theme can detect and quantify the overall time structure in behavioral data without being distracted by the variation in details. Theme has been successfully used in a wide variety of disciplines and is especially effective in the analysis of social interactions.

Established model
Theme is based on a well-established mathematical model. It describes behavior in terms of time relationships between activities. Due to this model Theme can detect much more structure than other methods. Statistically significant series of 20-30 events are no exception, where most methods stop at 3-5. The results found by Theme tend to be very robust. The probability of long T-patterns occurring by chance is extremely low in most data. Research with Theme has been going on for over twenty years. There is a large corpus of literature and an active multidisciplinary academic community.