Tobler's first law of geography

[3] Tobler first presented his seminal idea during a meeting of the International Geographical Union's Commission on Qualitative Methods held in 1969 and later published by him in 1970 in his publication "A Computer Movie Simulating Urban Growth in the Detroit Region".

[1] In this paper Tobler created a model of the population growth in Detroit, and was discussing variables included within the model, and Tobler was probably not extremely serious when he originally invoked the first law and instead was explaining limitations brought about by computers of the 1970s.

In 1935, R.A. Fisher said "the widely verified fact that patches in close proximity are commonly more alike, as judged by the yield of crops, than those which are further apart.

[10] In 2004, the peer reviewed journal Annals of the Association of American Geographers included a section titled "Methods, Models, and GIS Forum: On Tobler's First Law of Geography" that contained several peer-reviewed papers from members of the 2003 panel.

[5] In this publication, Tobler discussed his less well known second law, which complements the first: "The phenomenon external to an area of interest affects what goes on inside.

[5] An anonymous reviewer pointed out that Tobler's first law is remarkably close to a phrase in a book by R.A. Fisher in 1935.