Descriptive Statistics for Spatial Distributions

Chapter 3 of the textbook Pages 76-115

Overview
Types of spatial data Conversions between types Descriptive spatial statistics

Applications of descriptive spatial statistics: accessibility/nearness What types exist? Examples:

What is the nearest ambulance station for a home? A point that minimizes overall travel times from a set of homes (where to locate a new hospital). A point that minimizes travel times from a majority of homes (where to locate a new store).

Applications of Descriptive spatial statistics: dispersion How dispersed are the data? Do the data cluster around a number of centers?

Types of Geographic Data

Areal Point Network Directional
How does this concept fit with the scale of measurement?

Switching Between Data Types

Point to area
Thiessen Polygons Interpolation

Area to point
Centroids

Thiessen Polygons
According to the book
1) Join (draw lines) between all neighboring points 2) Bisect these lines 3) Draw the polygons

Making Thiessen polygons is all about making triangles

Draw connecting lines between points and their 2 closest neighbors to make a triangle (some points may be connected to more than 2 points) Bisect the 3 connecting lines and extend them until they intersect For acute triangles: the intersection point will be inside the triangles and all bisecting lines will actually cross the original connecting lines For obtuse triangles: the intersection point will be outside the triangles and the bisecting line opposite the obtuse angle wont cross the connecting line The bisecting lines are the edges of the Thiessen polygons

Thiessen Polygons Example

Spatial Interpolation:
point i known value zi distance di weight wi

Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW)

unknown value (to be interpolated) at location x

zx wi zi
i

w
i

The estimate of the unknown value is a weighted average

wi 1 d i2

Sample weighting function

Interpolation Example
Calculate the interpolated Z value for point A using B1 B2 B3 B4

Interpolation Example
point i known value zi distance di weight wi unknown value (to be interpolated) at location x

zx wi zi
i

w
i

wi 1 d i2

Descriptive Statistics for Areal Data

Location Quotient
Basically the % of a single local population / % of the single population for the entire area
The textbook refers to these groups as the activity (A) and base (B) Example: % of people employed locally in manufacturing / % of manufacturing workers in the region Each polygon will have a calculated value for each category of worker

Ai / Ai LQ i Bi / Bi

Descriptive Statistics for Areal Data

Location Coefficient
A measure of concentration for a single population (or group, activity, etc.) over an entire region

Calculated by figuring out the percentage difference between % activity and the % base for each areal unit Sum either the positive or negative differences Divide the sum by the total population

How is this different from the localization quotient?

Descriptive Statistics for Areal Data

Lorenz Curve
A method for showing the results of the location quotient (LQ) graphically Calculated by first ranking the areas by LQ Then calculate the cumulative percentages for both the activity and the base Graph the data with the activity cumulative percentage value acting as the X and the base cumulative percentage value acting as the Y Compare the shape of the curve to an unconcentrated line (i.e., a line with a slope of 1)

Gini Coefficient
Also called the index of dissimilarity The maximum distance between the Lorenz curve and the unconcentrated line

Equivalent to the largest difference between the activity and base percentages
The Gini coefficient (and the Lorenz curve) are also useful for comparing 2 activities (i.e., testing similarity rather than just concentration)

Areal Descriptive Statistics Example

Apply areal descriptive statistics to the example livestock distribution