Spatial classification
Topic: Economic Data: Census, NSS, Surveys and Statistical Tools · NCERT: Class 11, Ch 3 "Organisation of Data"; Class 11, Ch 4 "Presentation of Data"; Class 11, Ch 8 "Use of Statistical Tools"
Meaning
Spatial classification groups data by place. The place can be a village, district, state, city or country. It is one of four ways to classify data. The other three are by time (chronological), by attribute (qualitative) and by measurable size (quantitative). It is useful for comparing regions, such as crop yields, literacy or income across states or countries.
Example
Here is wheat yield in 2013, in kg per hectare, classified by country (Agricultural Statistics at a Glance 2015): India 3,154; France 7,254; Germany 7,998; China 5,055; Canada 3,594; Pakistan 2,787. This shows at a glance that India's yield was less than half of France's.
Don't confuse with
- Chronological classification: this groups data by time, such as India's population in each census year, and gives a time series. Spatial classification groups data by place.
Related concepts
- Raw data
- Classification
- Chronological classification
- Qualitative classification
- Quantitative classification
- Attribute
- Continuous variable
- Discrete variable
- Frequency
- Frequency distribution