 A consistency index can also be calculated for an individual character "i", denoted ci.Besides reflecting the amount of homoplasy, the metric also reflects the number of taxa in the dataset, (to a lesser extent) the number of characters in a dataset, the degree to which each character carries phylogenetic information, and the fashion in which additive characters are coded, rendering it unfit for purpose.ci occupies a range from 1 to 1/["n.taxa"/2] in binary characters with an even state distribution; its minimum value is larger when states are not evenly spread.