Daniel Alva Griffith (born November 15, 1948) is an American geographer, spatial statistician, and geographic information scientist (GIScientist). He is known for his contributions to quantitative geography and spatial statistics, particularly for developing the Moran eigenvector spatial filtering (MESF) technique and introducing the sui-random variables model, both of which address spatial autocorrelation in regression modeling. His work has applications in geography, economics, epidemiology, environmental sciences, and other disciplines.
Griffith is Ashbel Smith Professor Emeritus of Geospatial Information Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. Since 2021, bibliometric rankings such as Research.com and ScholarGPS have placed him among the top 0.05% of global scholars in geography, with one ranking listing him as the top spatial analyst worldwide.
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Early life and education
Griffith was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and raised in Westmoreland County. He earned a B.S. in mathematics education and an M.A. in geography from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He completed a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Toronto, followed by an M.S. in statistics at Pennsylvania State University.