This course provides an introduction to quantitative methods used by geographers to analyze and interpret geographic data and solve geographic problems. Topics include descriptive statistics, hypothesis formulation and testing, correlation, regression, principal component analysis and factor analysis. Through this course, students will have a basic understanding of quantitative methods used by geographers and will be able to analyze and interpret geographic data and solve geographic problems from the statistical perspective.
   The goals of this course are：
1. To help students understand the purpose, meaning, and use of statistics in geographical research.
2. To introduce basic statistical methods used by geographers in research.
3. To learn how to use Statistical software of SPSS and Sigmaplot to real geographic problem solving.