ABSTRACT
A concern for numeracy is relevant to geography because the discipline is heavily dependent on data. A great deal of geographical research is based on the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, arising from sources as diverse as personal surveys and questionnaires, government publications, field measurements, laboratory experiments and satellite images. By ‘data’, geographers usually mean collections of facts and figures which refer to geographical ‘individuals’. These ‘individuals’ may be distinct persons, and the data, observations on their ages, sexes, occupations or ethnic origins. Alternatively, the ‘individuals’ may be features in the landscape such as rivers, glaciers or peat bogs, and the data may be a series of observations on their dimensions, sinuosity, area or organic composition. However, just to add a little confusion, the term ‘individual’ may also be used to refer to social or physical aggregates such as zones, mountain ranges, drainage basins or travel-to-work areas. The data collected for these ‘individuals’ are actually aggregates of data gathered from sampling points within them. Thus unemployment in the geographical individual ‘County Durham’ is the total number of eligible unemployed claimants who are registered with Job Centres within the county.
