Circular Statistics

Circular Statistics
Jonathan Corcoran

The presentation will introduce circular statistics from its basic
principles and outline the fallacy of standard linear measures when
applied to data that can be considered circular in nature. Through the
provision of human geography examples (for example, journey to work
data and the movement of tourists in a national park) various circular
measures will be discussed and applied to analyse human behaviour. It
will be shown that through the application of circular statistics
questions such as – what is the mean direction of travel? What is the
mean time that tourists access areas of a national park? And more
sophisticated questions such as does the direction of travel of one
area differ significantly to its neighbouring areas? can be addressed.
Methods to graphically represent circular data will also be
demonstrated coupled with their incorporation into a GIS environment.

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