Thinking Spatially in the Social Sciences

The table of numbers or statistics is such a common way to organize information that we scarcely if ever think about its significance. Tables are used to organize information about states from the decennial census; to report the comparative performance of national economies; to summarize the performance of individual schools in a state; and for a host of other purposes. In most cases a simple convention will have been followed in preparing the table (Nicol and Pexman, 1999). The rows of the table will represent the instances, objects, or cases whose attributes are being reported, and all such objects will be drawn from a homogeneous class, such as counties, states, or nations. Each column of the table represents one of the attributes, allowing the reader to make comparisons by running the eye up or down a column, or by computing statistics such as column means. In all of the instances just listed the objects happen to be geographic, in the sense that they occupy distinct locations on the Earth's surface; in the case of the census these objects might range from regions to states, counties, municipalities, census tracts, or block groups.