Spatial Autocorrelation game:

This Game is suggested by Daniel Griffith in his book Spatial Autocorrelation: A Primer, and in his article 'Teaching Spatial Autocorrelation by Simulation' in the Journal of Geography in Higher Education 11:2, 1987.

Given an initial random assortment of integers from 0 to 99 which fill a 4 by 4 matrix, rearrange them to alter the spatial autocorrelation so as to maximize it, minimize it, or even to drive it to zero. SA is measured in this game by an adjusted Geary's contiguity ratio and Moran's I, varying between -1 and 1.

Give it a try. Here's your random matrix (its SA should be close to 0, since it was filled randomly!):

SA (geary):
-.120912
SA (moran):
-.166733

1	32	25	14
33	99	11	24
28	56	43	52
78	8	54	21

Try to make the SA approach the extremes (-1 and 1) and 0. Dr. Griffith's experience shows that folks have an easier time getting it to -1 than to either 0 or 1....

Do you want to cheat and look at some extreme examples?

Report problems with this script to Andy Long.
cgi.tcl script creator: Don Libes, of NIST.
cgi.tcl script butcher: Andy Long, of NKU.
Go back to cgi.tcl homepage or list of examples.