Spatial thinking, one
form of thinking, is a collection of cognitive skills. The skills consist of
declarative and perceptual forms of knowledge and some cognitive operations
that can be used to transform, combine, or otherwise operate on this knowledge.
The key to spatial thinking is a constructive amalgam of three elements:
concepts of space, tools of representation, and processes of reasoning. It is
the concept of space that makes spatial thinking a distinctive form of
thinking. By understanding the meanings of space, we can use its properties
(e.g., dimensionality, continuity, proximity, separation) as a vehicle for
structuring problems, finding answers, and expressing and communicating
solutions..
(Learn to Think Spatially. National Academies Press. USA,
2006 accessed thru https://www.nap.edu/read/11019/chapter/6)
To think spatially
entails knowing about (1) space—for example, the relationships
among units of measurement (e.g., kilometers versus miles), different ways of
calculating distance (e.g., miles, travel time, travel cost), the basis of
coordinate systems (e.g., Cartesian versus polar coordinates), the nature of
spaces (e.g., number of dimensions [two- versus three-dimensional]); (2) representation—for
example, the relationships among views (e.g., plans versus elevations of
buildings, or orthogonal versus perspective maps), the effect of projections
(e.g., Mercator versus equal-area map projections), the principles of graphic
design (e.g., the roles of legibility, visual contrast, and figure-ground
organization in the readability of graphs and maps); and (3) reasoning—for
example, the
different ways of thinking about shortest distances (e.g., as the crow flies
versus route distance in a rectangular street grid), the ability to extrapolate
and interpolate (e.g., projecting a functional relationship on a graph into the
future or estimating the slope of a hillside from a map of contour lines), and
making decisions (e.g., given traffic reports on a radio, selecting an
alternative detour).
(Learn to Think Spatially. National Academies Press. USA
accessed thru https://www.nap.edu/read/11019/chapter/6)
the form: {xj
(i; t) ; j = 1, . . ., k; i = 1, . . ., n}. (2.1)
(Haining, R. 2009. The Special Nature of Spatial Data (Chapter 2).
Spatial Analysis (Handbook). Ed. A.S. Foteringham and P.A. Rogerson. Sage
Publications. 5 pp.)
It
should be noted that spatial data is at the heart of every GIS application.
Spatial data stores the geographic location of particular features, along with
information describing what these features represent. The location is usually
specified according to some geographic referencing system (e.g. latitude,
longitude) or simply by an address. Spatial data may define some physical
characteristics, such as location or position, or it may also define a property
such as the area of a forest (which results from defining the various positions
of its boundaries). (Davies, 1996).
(Fundamentals of GIS Data, Chapter 2, p.1
accessed at http://igre.emich.edu/wsatraining/TManual/Chapter2/Chap2.pdf)
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