Dr. Daniel Arribas-Bel
Dr. Daniel Arribas-Bel Offers Summer Mini-Course on Spatial Analysis and Spatial Econometrics
Summer visitor Dr. Daniel Arribas-Bel offered the university community a mini-course on spatial analysis and spatial econometrics for four days in August. The course was taught as a seminar-workshop, where lectures were augmented by hands-on labs each day. In four, three-hour sessions students learned the main concepts and techniques in exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial regression. Students were introduced to methods using data sets for spatial analysis, spatial mapping, spatial statistics and spatial regression. The role of spatial weight matrices was emphasized. A recurring theme was how to model and account for spatial heterogeneity and spatial interaction in the data. An unusual aspect of the course was that all software used was open source and freely available. The course was well-attended by faculty and graduate students from economics and sociology from both the University of Houston and Rice University.
Dr. Arribas-Bel also presented his work “The Magic’s in the Recipe - Urban Diversity and Popular Amenities” at a brown-bag lunch seminar in the economics department. Dr. Arribas-Bel is an economic geographer and an expert on spatial methods. He is a Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Birmingham, UK.