This method function calculates the semi-variogram for an arbitrary vector object, according to the distances in distance. For each pair of elements x,y in object, the corresponding semi-variogram is (x−y)2/2. The semi-variogram is useful for identifying and modeling spatial correlation structures in observations with constant expectation and constant variance.
object: a numeric vector with the values to be used for calculating the semi-variogram, usually a residual vector from a fitted model.
distance: a numeric vector with the pairwise distances corresponding to the elements of object. The order of the elements in distance must correspond to the pairs (1,2), (1,3), ..., (n-1,n), with n representing the length of object, and must have length n(n-1)/2.
...: some methods for this generic require additional arguments. None are used in this method.
Returns
a data frame with columns variog and dist representing, respectively, the semi-variogram values and the corresponding distances. The returned value inherits from class Variogram.
References
Cressie, N.A.C. (1993), "Statistics for Spatial Data", J. Wiley & Sons.