| Sumario: | Arguing that the modifiable areal unit problem becomes apparent when incidence rates are mapped on the basis of areal units, the writer suggests a new methodology to choose appropriate areal units using the Akaike information criterion and two search methods for an informative geographical aggregation in map construction. He contends that the optimal zoning of similarity is suitable for locating spatial anomalies but offers a biased overall pattern. In addition, he argues that an alternative approach is to cluster areal units according to explanatory variables. Furthermore, he asserts that this reveals clear spatial patterns of elderly men's mortality matching the ecological structure in the Tokyo, Japan, metropolitan area.
|
|---|