The base nLTT statistic can be used as a semi stand-alone
statistic for phylogenetic trees. However, please note that although this
provides a nice way of checking the power of the nLTT statistic without
directly comparing two trees, the nLTT_base statistic is not a substitute
for directly comparing two phylogenetic trees. E.g. one would perhaps
naively assume that \(nLTT(A, B) = |nLTT(A, base) - nLTT(B, base)\).
Indeed, in some cases this may hold true (when, for instance, all normalized
lineages of A are less than all normalized lineages of B), but once the
nLTT curve of A intersects the nLTT curve of B, this no longer applies.