Module 5 - Cartography - Spatial Statistics

This week we studied spatial statistics, analyzing the distribution of spatial data in the form of weather stations across Western Europe and their temperature values.

Using an online ESRI course and the Spatial Statistics toolbox, we calculated the mean an median centers and the directional distribution of the weather stations.  We also examined the distribution of the temperature data using histogram, normal QQ plot, Voronoi map, and semivariagram cloud.


Included here is the Normal QQ plot for the data.  It compares our dataset with a normal distribution, represented by the straight line.  I found this plot to be quite elegant, because it very intuitively shows how close to normal our data is.  We can see that it is almost normal, because it closely follows the ideal line. However, we can also see that there are some outliers, data points that lie outside the normal distribution, at the right end of the plot.  A few temperature values are unexpectedly high.  We also saw those points on the histogram, maps and semivariagram cloud.