ABSTRACT
Many aspiring planners don’t often find comfort in numbers and numerical analysis. However, many practicing planners (especially in small and mid-sized jurisdictions) often find that competency in quantitative methods leads to better decisions and more effective outcomes. This chapter discusses various analytical concepts and methods relevant to planning. Starting with the basic concepts of statistics, the reader is taken on a journey of issues that are explained and resolved with the use of quantitative methods. The chapter is structured in a way to highlight common and everyday uses of analytical methods for a practicing planner. These methods include demographic analysis such as population projections and interpretation of population pyramids; economic methods such as shift-share analysis which proves useful in business development efforts, and more general considerations such as taking precaution when using census data products (margins of error) and the power that the construction of a confidence interval about a mean can provide you with as a tool to help interpret the results of traffic impact analyses. The audience for this chapter is young, aspiring planning students and professional planners in small and mid-sized jurisdictions.
