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 "dispersion"

dispersion

The occurrences within a distribution are more or less dispersed. A boundary may be drawn such that density is high and the dispersion of the occurrences seems fairly uniform...However, using a different boundary (e.g., one defining a larger area), the density can change dramatically and what appeared to be uniform dispersion may change to a tight cluster. Within any given spatial distribution, occurrences therefore can be more less clustered, more or less uniformly distributed, or more or less randomly distributed.

Geography

Golledge (1995)

Primitives of Spatial Knowledge

dispersion

[OED]: 1. The action of dispersing or scattering abroad; the condition or state of being dispersed; scattering, distribution, circulation; 2. The action of diffusing or spreading; diffusion.

Linguistics

OED Online (2nd Ed.)

Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition