Spatial Concept Perspectives

We have gathered ~300 excerpts from published works about fundamental spatial concept terms. These have been cross-referenced with the concept lexicon appearing on the left. Those terms were drawn from the U.S.National Science Education Standards (NSES 1996) for topic areas B - Physical Science, C - Life Science, D - Earth and Space Science, as well as from the 1994 U.S. Geography Teaching Standards for grades 9-12. Those standards can be browsed here.

spatial concept terms

disciplinary perspectives on "density"

density

Once a boundary has been defined, a simple numerical count of the occurrences related to an estimate of the area contained within the boundary introduces the notion of density. Density, of course, is the number of units per unit area and can provide interesting and useful information for comparing the nature of distributions (p. 37)

Geography

Golledge (1995)

Primitives of Spatial Knowledge

density

To comprehend a spatial interpretation of the concept of ratio (p. 95)

Geography

Golledge, et al. (2008)

Matching geospatial concepts with geographic educational needs

density

[OED]: 2. a. Physics. The degree of consistence of a body or substance, measured by the ratio of the mass to the volume, or by the quantity of matter in a unit of bulk.

Linguistics

OED Online (2nd Ed.)

Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition

density estimation

Estimating the density of objects per unit area (e.g., using kernels) or per unit length of line. "One of the more useful concepts in spatial analysis is density - the density of humans in a crowded city, or the density of tracks across a stretch of desert, or the density of retail stores in a shopping centre. Density provides an effective link between the discrete-object and continuous-field conceptualisations, since density expresses the number of discrete objects per unit of area, and is itself a continuous field.

Geography

de Smith, et al. (2008)

Geospatial Analysis: A comprehensive guide to principles, techniques, and software tools