Final Exam
GIS I

Answer four out of six questions.  Make sure you clearly show what questions you answered on the exam.  Please note that the exam is slightly different for graduate and undergraduate students.  Please make an effort to be thorough yet concise (no more than one page per question).  Use all resources available to you including texts, manuals, lab exercises, and help files.  Your answers should be typed and single spaced and any relevant diagram neatly drawn.  The exam is due on  Tuesday December 9th in class or in my mailbox in Cramer 424J.

Graduate Students 

1. A data model is a set of constructs for describing and representing the world in a computer system.  Data models are important to GIS because they control the way that data are stored and have a major impact on the type of analytical operations that can be performed.  Longley et al. discussed conceptual, logical, and physical GIS data models.  Describe the data that you used for your project within this theoretical context.  Include descriptions of the types of GIS data models that you used including their topological structures and any other information relevant to understand how these data sets represent reality.
2. Geographic data collection can be classified into primary and secondary raster and vector collection.  Explain each of the four categories and give examples of each.  In your answer, describe some of the methods involved with the different collection techniques.  What are the most important methods of geographic data collection now versus ten years ago?
3. What is spatial analysis? Describe the spatial analysis you did in your project?  When using GIS software you click on buttons and choose menu commands.  It is a sort of black box operation.  What happened inside the black box in your project?  Give as much detail as you can.  Describe the types of GIS measurements you made including your understanding of the algorithms that the GIS software implemented.  For example, if you did an overlay then you integrated attributes from different data sets, so how did the GIS software do this?   Also mention what software functions you used in ArcGIS.
4. Describe the difference between density measurement and interpolation.  What does spatial interpolation have to do with Tobler’s Law and what are the different methods of spatial interpolation?  Why are density measures resolution dependent?
5. Spatial analysis includes simple descriptive summaries of spatial data.  Describe how one spatial central tendency summary statistic, the centroid, is calculated.  Also desribe how its associated dispersion statistic is calculated.  How might you use these simple descriptive statistics to describe a spatial distribution?
6. Give an example of optimum path routing through continuous space.  In your answer make sure to include the concepts of friction values, move sets, and cost layers.  

Undergraduate Students 

1. A data model is a set of constructs for describing and representing the world in a computer system.  Data models are important to GIS because they control the way that data are stored and have a major impact on the type of analytical operations that can be performed.  Describe the topological vector, the raster, and the TIN data models in detail. 
2. Geographic data collection can be classified into primary and secondary raster and vector collection.  Explain each of the four categories and give examples of each.  In your answer, describe some of the methods involved with the different collection techniques.  What are the most important methods of geographic data collection now versus ten years ago?
3. What is spatial analysis?   Describe the following spatial analytical procedures and give examples of how they can be used- (a) measuring compactness of polygons, (b) buffering, and (c) point in polygon analysis.
4. Describe the difference between density measurement and interpolation.  What does spatial interpolation have to do with Tobler’s Law and what are the different methods of spatial interpolation?  Why are density measures resolution dependent?
5. Spatial analysis includes simple descriptive summaries of spatial data.  Describe how one spatial central tendency summary statistic, the centroid, is calculated.  Also desribe how its associated dispersion statistic is calculated.  How might you use these simple descriptive statistics to describe a spatial distribution?
6. Give an example of optimum path routing through continuous space.  In your answer make sure to include the concepts of friction values, move sets, and cost layers.