Gregoire, The question of whether or not to count degrees of freedom still does not get the attention it so richly deserves. Once upon a time I asked a prominent professor of mathematics whether or not degrees of freedom may be dismissed with impunity. His response was, "But without degrees of freedom statistical inferences are impossible!" Thus it would seem that probabilistic inferences underpin the ongoing exchange of views on your website. Readers who are ready to pursue the alternative to assuming spatial dependence, interpolating by kriging, smoothing pseudo variances, and rigging the rules of applied statistics, may look at my latest work.
Kind regards, JanWM http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_dependence http://geostatscam.com/sampling_and_statistics_explained.htm http://blog.bulk-online.com/
