A New Perspective on Moran’s Coefficient: Revisited

Abstract

Moran’s I (Moran’s coefficient) is one of the most prominent measures of spatial autocorrelation. It is well known that Moran’s I has a representation that is similar to a Fourier series and is therefore useful for characterizing spatial data. However, the representation needs to be modified. This paper contributes to the literature by showing the necessary modification and presenting some further results. In addition, we provide the required MATLAB/GNU Octave and R user-defined functions.

Keywords

• spatial autocorrelation
• Moran’s I
• linear algebraic graph theory
• eigenvector spatial filtering
• Geary’s c