Abstract：This paper is devoted to reconsidering the past, present, and future of quantitative geography. General quantitative geography consists of mathematical geography and statistical geography. The former corresponds to theoretical geography while the latter to quantitative geography in a narrow sense. Where "narrow sense" is concerned, "quantitative revolution" was concluded as early as 1960s; but where "broad sense" is concerned, "theoretical revolution" of geography is pending. The mathematics applied to geographical research has two functions: One is to be employed as a tool of sorting out the data; the other is to constitute assumptions and then build models for developing theories. The latter is much more important than the former, and a mathematical model itself is much more significant than the insights from data. The introduction of post-modern mathematics of chaos and fractals, together with bionic mathematical series such as cellular automata, neural nets, genetic algorithms, and even artificial life, etc., has marked an epoch in quantitative methods of geography. The classical quantitative geography and burgeoning geo-computation (GC) have reached the same goal by different routes, and GC can be regarded as a continual revolution of GIS and quantitative geography.
收稿日期: 2005-01-25
引用本文:
陈彦光. 地理数学方法:从计量地理到地理计算[J]. , 2005, 44(1): 0-0.
陈彦光. Mathematical methods of geography: from quantitative analysis to GeoComputation. , 2005, 44(1): 0-0.
