Other Software and Data

If you're registered on Li360 you have likely seen the name W.Tobler. Every member gets 1 point for joining the community, which puts them on the bottom rung of the Leaderboard. Waldo is our new member ambassador because he is best known for having proposed the 'first law of geography' in 1970.

The first law states: "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."

You can read more about the first law here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobler%27s_first_law_of_geography

Tobler was one of the first people to use computers for computational geography and quantitative spatial analysis in the 1960s, and as a result some people consider him to be the godfather of Location Intelligence.

Tobler is a Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara Department of Geography

You can read more about Waldo here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waldo_R._Tobler

See Attachment

Very interesting, for anyone who uses interpolation techniques to create raster surfaces, for example using MapInfo Advanced, I would recommend following the links above and reading how Tobler's first law underpins algorithms such as IDW, Kriging, the creation of cost surfaces and how distance affects the influence geographic features have on one another. These concepts can provide valuable insight in to many business area's for example, how land values increase/decrease outside of cities, gravity of a particular retail outlet at a certain location, how mobile phone signal strength varies over distance or can even help miners to find gold.

Tobler was one of the principal investigators and a senior scientist in the National Science Foundation-sponsored National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. He has used computers in geographic research since the 1960s, with emphasis on mathematical modeling and graphic interpretations. Well known for his publications, he formulated the "first law of geography" in 1970 while producing a computer movie, and is the inventor of novel and unusual map projections, among which was the first derivation of the partial differential equations for area cartograms. He also invented a method for smooth two-dimensional mass-preserving areal data redistribution. In 1989, the American Geographical Society awarded Tobler with the Osborn Maitland Miller Medal. https://essayacademia.com