GEO5670 - Spatial Demography-Applied Statistics for Spatial Data

Course Description

This class will expose sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, environmental scholars, criminologist, economists and public health scholars to the vast array of spatial data that are available, encourage them to think critically and creatively about how different forms of spatial data can be integrated in the research, and introduce them to the spatial analytical methods that are increasingly encountered in statistical inquiry. This course will examine the characteristics of spatial data and focus on methods appropriate for exploring and modeling such data. The emphasis in this course will be on lattice and spatial point data. This is not a GIS class, but rather it is a class on how to apply statistics to spatial data. We will discuss spatial demography concepts in academic, government, and applied settings; data collection strategies that facilitate fieldwork; and the new directions and challenges associated with spatial demography techniques. The course will use work from various disciplines. In this course we will rely on Saint Louis as a social laboratory to illustrate the theoretical and methodological concepts. 

Course Outline

The course is designed to give you a better understanding of the potential of spatial statistics in social research and to become familiar with methods of using spatial statistics at multiple stages of a research process; identifying, integrating, manipulating and analyzing data; and identifying new directions and challenges. 

Learner Outcomes

• To help students develop and think about ways in which a spatial perspective might contribute to your own research. 
• To explore ways in which students can operationalize research through the use of spatial analysis and spatial statistics. 

Duration