This is a talk I gave for the 2011 PLUG conference at Bristol University.

A month or so ago (again, trying to catch up here!) I spoke at the annual PLUG conference in London. As always, lots of very interesting talks about National Pupil Database applications and developments. All the talks are available on the PLUG website…

A month or so ago my colleague Paul Longley and I ran a course for the National Centre for Research Methods on Geographical Data Visualisation and Geodemographics. The practical labs covered how you can code a set of postcodes by the Output Area Classification and how to generate a set of index score profiles from […]

A month or so ago my colleague Paul Longley and I ran a course for the National Centre for Research Methods on Geographical Data Visualisation and Geodemographics. The practical labs covered how you can code a set of postcodes by the Output Area Classi…

I have fallen a bit behind on my blog as teaching activities have ramped up. However, over the next couple of days I will sort this out and post a couple of updates. The first of these is a talk I did at University of Oxford in April for one of their R…

the Lower Super Output Area E01021988 located near to Tendring in the East of England. This output area was ranked the third most deprived area in 2007. The most deprived area in 2007 was located in Liverpool (E01006755), which in the 2010 classificat…

Last week I started creating some data extraction code for the new England and Wales crime maps website using the R software / language. Although there is an API, a more efficient way of accessing all of the data (and without causing stress to their AP…

Yet more terminal commands… this time for setting up a MYSQL database and installing the GUI tools in Ubuntu

MSQL

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

MYSQL GUI Tools (e.g. Query Browser)

sudo apt-get install mysql-gui-tools-common

MYSQL DBI Int…

R is a fantastic bit of software which I have been using on and off for a number of years since I gave up on SAS due to their (free for academics) annoying licenses and limited support for the things I wanted to do – R is infinitely flexible and totall…

For the past couple of months I have been running Ubuntu 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat”) on my Lenovo X300 laptop. The installation gets pretty much all the hardware up and running with the exception of the fingerprint reader and internal microphone. I am not entirely new to Linux, but the last time I was using it was about 1998 and it was a VERY different experience. These days Ubuntu is more than comparable to Windows or OSX – and in some respects actually much easier to use. For example, one thing I have been very impressed with is how simple it is to hook up to my Android phone making it very easy to share the mobile connection and browse the web.

Having said that – out of the box, a number of things have taken some setting up, however, with the power of Google I have muddled my way through. Although many of these installs can be completed in the Ubuntu GUI, I chose to seek out terminal commands so they can be replicated with ease when I no doubt break something serious. As such, this post provides some optional components for Ubuntu along with some software extras I have found useful. Please note, they worked for me, but I don’t want to hear about it if they break or don’t work for you!

Software

GIMP – Image editing software akin to Photoshop (http://www.gimp.org/)

sudo apt-get install gimp

Skype – VOIP Software

echo “deb http://download.skype.com/linux/repos/debian/ stable non-free #Skype” | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-key adv –keyserver pgp.mit.edu –recv-keys 0xd66b746e
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install skype

VLC – Play everything media player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

Liferea – RSS Reader (http://liferea.sourceforge.net/)

sudo apt-get install liferea

Configuration / Basic System

Remove Default Email Evolution

sudo apt-get remove evolution --purge
rm /home/<user> /.evolution

Flash

 sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Ejection Indicator – simple way to eject usb sticks or DVD

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:fredp/ppa
 sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install ejecter

Compiz – Adds fancy effects to the GUI – in particular is an Expose type effect. I only use this, so I have a one key press to see all my open windows, just like I do in OSX (http://www.compiz.org/)

 sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Dropbox – share files using the cloud (http://www.dropbox.com/) – any alternative that is integrated into Ubuntu on install is Ubuntu One

 echo “deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu $(lsb_release -cs) main” | sudo tee “/etc/apt/sources.list.d/dropbox.list” > /dev/null
 sudo apt-key adv –keyserver pgp.mit.edu –recv-keys 5044912E
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get -y –force-yes install nautilus-dropbox

DVD Playback – this doesn’t work on a fresh install – run this and the problem is solved!

 sudo apt-get install xine-ui libxine1-ffmpeg

Java

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sun-java-community-team/sun-java6
 sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre sun-java6-plugin

Gmail Watcher – this checks your gmail with indicators of new mail

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:loneowais/ppa
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install gmailwatcher

Weather indicator

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lorenzo-carbonell/atareao
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install my-weather-indicator

Hotot – A nice Twitter client for Linux (http://hotot.org/)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hotot-team
sudo apt-get install hotot

Nautilus elementary – a slightly nice file explorer interface

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa

Caffeine – Keeps you PC awake either manually or by linking it to start with specific software (https://launchpad.net/caffeine)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:caffeine-developers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install caffeine

Spatial interaction modelling and geodemographic analysis have each developed as quite separate research traditions. In this paper, we present an integrated model that harnesses the power of spatial interaction modelling to behavioural insights derived from a geodemographic classification. This approach is applied to the modelling of participation in higher education (HE). A novel feature of the paper is the integration of national schools, colleges and HE data; a national model is then calibrated and tested against actual recorded flows of students into HE. The model is implemented within a Java framework and is presented as a first step towards providing a quantitative tool that can be used by HE stakeholders to explore policies relating to such topics as widening access to under-represented groups.

Singleton, A.D., Alan G Wilson, and Oliver O’Brien. 2012. “Geodemographics and Spatial Interaction: An Integrated Model for Higher Education.” Journal of Geographical Systems 14 (2): 223–241. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10109-010-0141-5.

This paper addresses our ability to analyse progression rates into UK Higher Education (HE) using a range of data available at the individual and neighbourhood levels. The then Department for Children, Schools and Families has recently released data which make it possible to profile national patterns of student educational progression from post-compulsory schooling through to university. However, the linked records lack detailed socioeconomic information, and thus a geodemographic classification is used to analyse the flows of students from different sociospatial backgrounds into the HE system. Rates of progression are shown to vary greatly between these groups, and a disaggregation of HE participants by courses of study demonstrates that the abilities of institutions to attract students from different backgrounds will be constrained by the mix of their course offerings.

Singleton A D, 2010, “The geodemographics of educational progression and their implications for widening participation in higher education” Environment and Planning A 42(11) 2560 – 2580

Wikileaks released the IED attack locations between 2004 – 2009. The Guardian have cleaned up the data and done some nice mapping here. Coinciding with the arrival of my new workstation and ArcGIS install I decided to do some mapping myself. I have put…

Following the Educational Reform Act of 1988, families in England and Wales have been free to identify a preferred school for their children’s secondary education. However, as part of this open selection, the demand from parents opting to send their children to the best performing schools far outstrips the supply of available places at them, and consequently many schools ration places using entry criteria that favour those pupils domiciled close to the school. Through this geographic selection process, choice is spatially sorted and access to the best schools is often crucially dependent upon where parents live. After illustrating this problem, this paper develops an automated modelling technique that can be used to define and map school catchment areas based on the home locations of pupils attending every publically funded school in England. It then develops this framework to create a web based decision support tool to aid parents seeking secondary school places.

Singleton, A.D., Longley, P.A., Allen, R., O’Brien, O. (2010) Estimating secondary school catchment areas and the spatial equity of access. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2010.09.006

Last week saw the launch of a plethora of new tools related to the open geodemographic classification OAC.

One of my long standing irritations about the Output Area Classification has been the lack of simple tools that firstly enable you to append the…

My book ‘Educational Opportunity: The Geography of Access to Higher Education’ has just been published by Ashgate and summarises much of my educational research over the past 5 years.

Abstract
While in recent years the burgeoning Higher Education (HE)…

I have been asked on two occasions in the past month to present on the topic of my current and future research activity (both methodological and substantive). These draw together my activities over the past seven years at UCL made up of both PhD and Po…

Geodemographic classifications provide discrete indicators of the social, economic and demographic characteristics of people living within small geographic areas. They have hitherto been regarded as products, which are the final “best” outcome that can be achieved using available data and algorithms. However, reduction in computational cost, increased network bandwidths and increasingly accessible spatial data infrastructures have together created the potential for the creation of classifications in near real time within distributed online environments. Yet paramount to the creation of truly real time geodemographic classifications is the ability for software to process and efficiency cluster large multidimensional spatial databases within a timescale that is consistent with online user interaction. To this end, this article evaluates the computational efficiency of a number of clustering algorithms with a view to creating geodemographic classifications “on the fly” at a range of different geographic scales.

Muhammad Adnan, Paul A Longley, Alex D Singleton and Chris Brunsdon

Adnan, M., P.A. Longley, A.D. Singleton, and C. Brunsdon. 2010. “Towards Real-Time Geodemographics: Clustering Algorithm Performance for Large Multidimensional Spatial Databases.” Transactions in GIS 14 (3): 283–297. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9671.2010.01197.x.

Presented by Oliver O’Brien.

University of Oxford, Retail Location Analysis Programme 12 – 14 April 2010

NYC Yellow Cabs have GPS fitted to them which have been tracked for the past year or so… anyway, there is an excellent article on this in the New York Times with obligatory map visualization:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/nyregion/03icab.html
m…

I am very excited by the massive expansion of Google Street View, and is a good opportunity to present my street chronology:

1980 – 1988
Alnwick, Northumberland

1988-1990
Alnmouth, Northumberland

1990-1993
Allestree, Derby

1993-1998
Shenley Church …

This paper reports on a cross-cultural outreach activity of the current UK ‘Spatial Literacy in Teaching’ (SPLINT) Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL), a past UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) grant, and shared interests in family names between Japanese and UK academics. It describes a pedagogic programme developed for Japanese postgraduates and advanced undergraduates that entailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the spatial distributions of Japanese family names. The authors describe some specific semantic, procedural and theoretical issues and, more generally, suggest how names analysis provides a common framework for engaging student interest in GIS.

Paul A. Longley; Alex D. Singleton; Keiji Yano; Tomoki Nakaya

Longley, Paul A., A.D. Singleton, Keiji Yano, and Tomoki Nakaya. 2010. “Lost in Translation: Cross-Cultural Experiences in Teaching Geo-Genealogy.” Journal of Geography in Higher Education 34 (1): 21–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03098260902982476.