Day 21, Mat115H

• Thanks for quickly sending in our questions for our discussions with the folks of the BCC. What did you think of that discussion? Did you learn anything, or was it all old hat and obvious stuff?

  Remember that you have a homework due for Wednesday. We need to prepare a survey, and each of you will present a proposal. Then we'll think it over during fall break and come back and get started on creating and delivering it. This will be one of our big "deliverables" to "Monica" (our surrogate contact in Newport).

• You have a homework due today. Your adjacency matrix worksheet.

Question of the Day:

• Before we go on: last Wednesday we were talking about Pascal's triangle, and how it is useful. I want to say a few more words about that, as it was a little rushed.
  • Counting all simple groups on $n$ labelled vertices:
    • Rows of Pascal's triangle (made up of "combinations")
    • "All the ways of picking distinct items" -- powers of two!

  • A curiousity: Fibonacci numbers in Pascal's triangle

• Today we're going to discuss spatial statistics, and how they are used and defined.

  As a focal point, connecting the issues of social deprivations and lead contamination (and poisoning), I present the case of Woburn, MA (depicted in the film A Civil Action).

  There is another type of analysis we will do with lead (spatial interpolation) yet to come. But today we focus on the use of adjacency matrices in the creation of these spatial statistics. But perhaps we focus instead, today, on why we need them....

  Many years ago I created a short history of the Woburn, MA case of cancer clusters.

  • A more extensive exploration of the situation is at this website. I'd like you to explore this website for class discussion on Friday.

  • At the outset, it was a cluster of cases that tipped off residents that there was a cancer problem in their town, and in a particular part of town.

    In the end, this clustering tipped off authorities to the legacy of toxic pollution left by the heavy industrialization of the town.

  • Some spatial statistics are used to measure clustering: Spatial Autocorrelation game

  • What is Moran's I (we can get there via the Stat Advisor).