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Spatial Statistics and Geostatistics: Basic Concepts

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Historical Background

Statisticians have recognized impacts of correlated observations since the inception of their discipline. For example, in the early 1800s, while developing bivariate normal curve theory, Laplace acknowledged that between day variations in barometric pressure readings tend to be much greater than within day readings (Stigler 1986, p. 151). This thinking occurred during the emergence of multivariate statistics, being inspired in part by Lagrange’s contribution of the multivariate normal distribution in the early 1800s (Stigler 1986, ‘p. 118). Ultimately, statisticians developed both multivariate data analysis theory and its extension to correlated sample situations (e.g., the difference of correlated means, Hotelling (1931); the difference of correlated variances, Pitman (1939); the difference of correlated correlation coefficients, Dunn and Clark (1971)). Addressing variable correlation concerns spawned the addressing of observation correlation concerns in the...

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Griffith, D. (2017). Spatial Statistics and Geostatistics: Basic Concepts. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H., Zhou, X. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17885-1_1650

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