Certain Aspects of the Expansion of Quantitative Methodology in American Geography

Abstract

Since the nineteenth century, American geographers have applied mathematical concepts to geographic research, and they have increased the level of mathematical sophistication associated with their research. To some extent geographers have traditionally been interested in developing methods of quantitative geographic analysis; however, it was not until the turn of the twentieth century that there was concentrated effort to develop special programs of quantitative methods training and to expand the scope of quantitative geographic research. This paper attempts to examine certain aspects of expansion of quantitative methods training and research for the period 1954-1965. Since the early 1950s the number of major geography departments offering specialized training in quantitative methodology has risen from three percent to over seventy-eight percent. Today many departments require training in statistics and mathematics and roughly one third of the major American doctoral training centers now allow their students to substitute mathematics training for one foreign language requirement. This trend is paralleled by an increasingly large number of quantitative dissertations and quantitative research papers found in a sample of the major geographic journals. Our studies indicate that these trends originated at the University of Washington, and certain Midwestern universities, but after a short period of time, the quantitative revolution spread throughout American geographic centers.LMOST from the beginning, geographers

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Quantitative methods I: The world we have lost – or where we started from

“…Quantitative-theoretical work never achieved disciplinary dominance, however, even in areas such as urban geography (as illustrated by Wheeler, 2002), partly because of resistance – not only from some traditional ‘regional geographers’ but also in historical and cultural geography too, plus some resistant economic and social geographers. The quantifiers had established a strong position in most North American geography departments, as exemplified by compulsory courses in statistics there; LaValle et al (1967) reported that courses in quantitative methods were offered in 78 per cent of graduate schools in 1965, compared to only 3 per cent a decade earlier. But their putative revolution had failed; no sooner had they established this strong bridgehead than other revolutions were being fomented, offering alternative approaches to the discipline with very different epistemological and ontological foundations, let alone methodological protocols.…”

“…The quantifiers had established a strong position in most North American geography departments, as exemplified by compulsory courses in statistics there; LaValle et al (1967) reported that courses in quantitative methods were offered in 78 per cent of graduate schools in 1965, compared to only 3 per cent a decade earlier. But their putative revolution had failed; no sooner had they established this strong bridgehead than other revolutions were being fomented, offering alternative approaches to the discipline with very different epistemological and ontological foundations, let alone methodological protocols.…”

Geography and Statistics: An Introduction

“…In fact geography has recently experienced something of a reorientation in its research practice (Gould, 1969), which has come to be known as the "quantitative revolution" (Burton, 1963). Thus whereas in 1955 a geographical article incorporating a correlation coefficient was a rarity, by 1965 such studies were commonplace (Lavalle, McConnell and Brown, 1967). This revolution in practice has several implications.…”