Geography 486

Labs- Geography 486

The skills labs in this course number about 10 and are designed to introduce students to both the software necessary to solve health and medical problems, but also to the logic that drives the decision to use statistical or methodological procedure.

The skills are intermediate in level of difficulty, and include several of the common statistical procedures (correlation, regression, etc.) found in other courses. Students will be introduced to both Microsoft Excel and SPSS (PAWS) software for many of these procedures and techniques.

Students from outside geography will be introduced to ArcMap a Geographic Information Software or (GIS). This program functions much like SPSS and Excel, but with a graphic interface that permits students to display the spatial qualities of the data in a map. Additionally, GIS allows students access to an array of additional statistical and methodoogical tools largely unavailable outside geography. Many of these techniques are exceptionally valuable to epidemiologist and public health officials.

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Among the labs scheduled for each semester:

1) Introduction to Microsoft Excel and its statisical, logical functions.

2) Introduction to SPSS

3) Introduction and intensive instruction in ArcMap GIS

4) Converting address data in to map points

5) Finding and using public health data (e.g., Centers for Disease Control, Los Angeles County Health Department)

6) Finding statisitcal relationships between data sets.

7) Extracting data from one format (addresses) into other formats (census tracts)

8) Finding spatial concentrations or spatial disparity in access to medical care, quality food, air quality, etc.

9) Finding spatial means and other measures of spatial central tendency.

10) Hypothesis testing.