Model Building and the Analysis of Spatial Pattern in Human Geography

I ntroduction and S ummary It is the purpose of this paper to determine how far various statistical models and methods of statistical inference have enabled the aims of geographical research to be met in the problem areas to which they have been applied. In so doing, we hope we can indicate to the statistician questions of geographical interest which cannot readily be answered by existing statistical methods; and to the geographer, some of the insights into geographical processes which may be gained from a statistical and model building approach. We would stress that we have not tried to be all inclusive in our coverage. Instead, we have tried to select some topics which best seem to convey the flavour of the kinds of things human geographers have been doing, and which will, at the same time, be of interest to statisticians on either theoretical or empirical grounds. In addition, our own interests mean that we have concentrated upon examples in human (economic and urban), rather than physical, geography, although similar approaches have been used there to a lesser degree. More general reviews are provided by Gould (1969), Berry (1971) and Wilson (1972).