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I am conducting a spatial econometrics study on housing prices.

In order to calculate spatial auto-correlation between house locations using some econometric software (like Matlab), I use decimal latitude/longitude coordinates of each house as the location in the entry of the program.

I was recently surprised by the question of a researcher asking me if the coordinates that I enter in Matlab are indeed Cartesian coordinates and not geographic ones? Otherwise, he said, estimates leads to wrong results! I didn't respond to him because I ignored the difference between geographic coordinates and cartesian coordinates.

Today I find in wikipedia the definition of the projected coordinate system that I use (Universal Transverse Mercator) that it "uses a 2-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system to give locations on the surface of the Earth". I am confused.

Are UTM coordinates already cartesian ones? If not, how are they related?

Jack Bracken
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Houssem
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  • No one could respond ? – Houssem Dec 26 '13 at 02:29
  • I don't use MATLAB, but from what I can read it uses earth-centered/fixed Cartesian coordinate system (X,Y,Z) and MATLAB provides functions for converting WGS84 latitude/longitude coordinates into a ECEF Cartesian projection (see: http://www.mathworks.com/help/map/ref/vec2mtx.html). I don't think you need to be concerned on using a UTM projection. But here's a link to some documentation relating to MATLAB and UTM projection: http://www.mathworks.com/help/map/working-with-the-utm-system.html – Andrew - OpenGeoCode Jan 18 '14 at 00:18

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