Evaluating Statistical Software for Analyzing Crime Patterns and Trends

In many crime analysis settings, the maps and overlay analysis provided by geographic information systems (GIS) are not sufficient. Statistical methods are needed to test hypotheses about the causes and correlates of crime patterns. Most of the GIS packages used in this book have relatively limited capabilities for statistical and spatial data analysis. In general, they produce only simple descriptive statistics, such as frequency, mean, and standard deviation, and the packages do not reflect the most recent developments in spatial analysis and modeling. For this ...