ABSTRACT
Geographers have traditionally been concerned with the description and differentiation of the earth’s surface. The objects or entities which are classified in numerical taxonomy are generally discrete, independent and unambiguously identifiable. When these techniques are applied to areal data several problems arise. These problems concern the arbitrariness involved in defining a geographical individual; the effects of variation in size and shape of the individual areal units; and the nature and measurement of location. The problems involved in the definition of the geographical individual are treated by D. Grigg. He points out the difficulty encountered in picking out separate, individual areal units from a continuum, and concludes that ‘there are no easily recognizable entities which form a mosaic whose interpretation and grouping is the business of regionalization. The most common method among geomorphologists is the selection of grid squares as the basic areal unit, characteristics of topography, hydrology and climate being averaged out for each grid square.
