Geographers Count: A Report on Quantitative Methods in Geography

Figures & data

Table 1 Quantitative skills present in the geography AS-/A-level curricula according to Redfern & Skinner (2008).

Types of sampling
Questionnaires and scales to measure attitudes
Types of survey and sources of secondary data
Arithmetic and logarithmic graphs, and Lorenz curves
Pie charts, bar graphs, proportional symbols, histograms, scatter plots and other graphs
Types of mapping, including flow mapping
Measures of central tendency and of dispersion
Location quotients
Spearman’s rank correlation, the chi-squared test, and the Mann Whitney U test
Nearest neighbour statistics
Geographical Information Systems (GIS)

Table 2 Quantitative skills proposed for the new AS- and A-Level subject content for geography (Department for Education 2013c).

Calculating and interpreting percentages, fractions, proportions and ratios
Using map coordinates
Recognising the different types of variable and scales of measurement
Using and interpreting a variety of data sets, primary and secondary
Understanding the strengths and limitations of sampling methods
Choosing appropriate graphical and cartographical methods of presentation
Using GIS to map and to present geographical data
Interpreting and drawing conclusions from data presented in graphical, tabular and cartographic form
Calculating and interpreting mean, mode and median, and measures of dispersion and concentration
Recognising positive and negative correlation and interpreting the strength of correlations
Using scatter plots and line of best fit
Analysing geographical relationships by generating appropriate hypotheses and using appropriate statistical tests
Interpreting the results of statistical tests including their statistical significance

Table 3 How sociology students rated the difficulty of various quantitative methods and the number that were taught them in Williams et al. (2008) survey (source: Williams et al. 2008).

		Easy	Hard	N^l
Group A	Bar charts, pie charts	94.6	5.4	626
	Mean, median, mode	92.0	8.0	636
	Sampling	84.0	16.0	583
	Frequencies	79.9	20.1	556
	Histograms, scattergrams	79.8	20.2	526
Group B	Correlation	73.2	26.8	570
	Hypothesis testing	63.8	36.2	486
	Standard deviation	59.3	40.7	543
Group C	Chi Square	46.6	53.4	335
	Pearson's r	45.5	54.5	231
	Cramer's V	45.3	54.7	139
	Z tests	44.7	55.3	150
	Spearman's rho	42.5	57.5	200
	Regression	40.1	59.9	227

N is the total number of students who said they had studied the subject.

Group A is “intuitively understandable topics requiring little arithmetic skills and largely visual” (Williams et al. 2008, p1015).

Group B is “topics that require greater conceptualization or logic and perhaps more confidence with number” (ibid).

Group C is “topics that form a more conventional core of basic statistics […] requiring more grasp of number and the internal logic of statistical reasoning” (ibid).

Williams, M., Payne, G., Hodgkinson, L. and Poade, D. (2008) Does British sociology count?: Sociology students’ attitudes toward quantitative methods. Sociology 42 (5), 1003–1021.

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