This book is about methods of analysing spatially referenced data where quantitative observations are associated with fixed points or areas on a map. My feeling was that there was a place for a book that tried to identify the main approaches to analysing spatial data and brought them within a coherent framework. Specifically, I wanted to examine the substantive justification for certain modes of analysis, to try to lay out some of the more important parts of statistical theory as it applied to spatial data analysis and consider important problems and discuss applications. The aim was to produce a text that proceeded from data collection to preliminary or exploratory analysis to uni-variate and multi-variate data analysis.

The purpose of Chapter 2 is to try and answer questions about what one is doing in spatial data analysis. As the introduction makes clear, I am not however advocating any form of separatism and in fact I see many of the problems associated with spatial data as amenable to treatment by currently available methods widely used in other branches of data analysis.

Chapters 3 and 4 lay out those areas of theoretical statistics which I think are relevant to the problems of representing spatial variation in the social and environmental sciences. No doubt there will be those who feel that the models are far too simple and the techniques far too difficult to justify application.