----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hello, I'm sorry about the cross-posting, but this is a fishing trip and I want to cast the net as widely as possible. If there is sufficient response, I'll summarize and repost to the respective lists. Maybe this is even a FAQ on some lists. I am thinking about designing a course on spatial data analysis for planning students with an emphasis on social, economic, demographic, and perhaps some environmental data. Its relationship to spatial statistics would be roughly the same as a course on data analysis' relationship to aspatial statistics. In other words, there would be more emphasis on organizing and accessing data, simple exploratory and descriptive data analysis and presentation, plus some dose of more conventional topics in spatial statistics (e.g. spatial autocorrelation). The course would be offered primarily to second-semester graduate students in community planning who have had one introductory statistics course and a course on research methods. Since this might substitute for one of our current planning methods courses, it might also have to spend some time on things like population projections, census data, etc. Does anyone out there teach a course like this? Do any of you have ideas or suggestions about such a course? Two things of particular concern are textbooks and software. Can anyone suggest a textbook that would be appropriate? What about software with general purpose statistical capabilities and the ability to make decent, presentation-quality analytical maps? One of the things I've learned the hard way is that any software like this would have to be extremely user-friendly or else the software becoms the focus of the course. While bright, some of these students have minimal computer experience, and I can't imagine using an algorithmic package in this course: this rules out S+, SAS (even with ASSIST, SAS GRAPH is way too complicated), and ARC/INFO. Ideally, the software should be cheap and run on fairly basic PC's (but this may be wishful thinking). Please let me know what you think, and if there's sufficient response I'll summarize and post to this list. Thanks for your time. Marsh Feldman Phone: 401/792-5953 Community Planning, 204 Rodman Hall FAX: 401/792-4395 The University of Rhode Island Internet: [log in to unmask] Kingston, RI 02881-0815 "Marginality confers legitimacy on one's contrariness."