An overview of the Spatial Statistics toolbox
Release 9.2 Last modified January 9, 2009	Print all topics in : "Spatial Statistics toolbox"

The Spatial Statistics toolbox contains statistical tools for analyzing the distribution of geographic features: finding the geographic center, identifying statistically significant spatial clusters (hot spots) or outliers, assessing overall patterns of clustering or dispersion, and so on. Spatial statistics differ from traditional statistics in that space and spatial relationships are an integral and implicit component of their mathematics. The tools in the Spatial Statistics toolbox demonstrate a variety of statistical operations appropriate for analyzing geographic data. In addition, for those tools written with python the source code is available to encourage you to learn from, modify, extend and share these and other analysis tools. For more information about these tools and statistical analysis of geographic data in general, see The ESRI Guide to GIS Analysis, Volumes 1 and 2 (Volume 2 discusses the methods in the Spatial Statistics toolbox).

The following toolsets are provided with the Spatial Statistics toolbox at ArcGIS 9.

Toolset	Description
Analyzing Patterns	These tools evaluate if features or attribute values form a clustered, uniform, or random pattern across the region.
Mapping Clusters	These tools may be used to identify statistically significant hot spots, cold spots, or spatial outliers.
Measuring Geographic Distributions	These tools address questions such as: Where's the center? What's the shape and orientation? How dispersed are the features?
Utilities	These tools may be used to reformat data or to render analysis results.

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