Spatial Statistics Workshop

The broad availability of spatial data on and in cities means that planners can paint pictures of both ‘what is where’ and ‘what was where, when’ with an unprecedented level of detail. However, ‘where’ questions often produce more questions than answers. Maps are evocative, but they are unable to answer questions that are crucially important to planners: how are phenomena interrelated, clustered, and interdependent? Spatial statistics offer one analytical approach for getting at these complex questions that are often key to understanding urban environments.

At the same time, statistics have a nasty way of making things less lucid even as they are intended to produce clear understandings of the world. As such, students will be partially evaluated on their ability to explain and clarify spatial statistical methods.