290137 VU Statistical Data Analysis with Focus on Spatial Statistics (2024W)

Statistics are important to understand or perform quantitative analysis and research. In the past, this used to be a tedious task, however, today’s environments are interactive with comprehensive graphical outputs. Furthermore, free and open-source software, tools, and textbooks are out there on the web and will be used in this course. Classical statistics describes and infers from data without considering its spatial component. In Geography, we clearly want to investigate how a location/place/area relates or even affects the information that we examine. This is where spatial statistics comes in. This course teaches fundamental spatial statistical methods. However, these are mostly extensions of their classical one-dimensional statistical counterparts. Hence, classic statistics are introduced too. The methods and concepts are explained intuitively and assisted with exercises without a theoretical approach that would require formal proofs. It is expected to learn “what” to use, “why” to use it, “how” it is should be implemented, and “how” it can be interpreted.

The course has a fairly equal amount of both lectures and practical work, in which theory and methods precede their application. The practical work consists of exercises of multiple tasks to be solved/answered given sufficient support material. During the practical work commercial as well as open-source or free software tools are used. It is emphasized that most statistical and spatial statistical methods can be performed without the use of commercial software. Furthermore, there are sessions locked for either tutorials or extra guidance to previous exercises.

Entry requirements
Knowledge of GIS software (e.g., ArcGIS – elementary level) is a prerequisite for this course.

ArcGIS software for students: https://zid.univie.ac.at/en/software-for-students/