  Spatial statistics is an area of study devoted to the statistical analysis of
data that have a spatial label associated with them. Geographers often refer to
the "location information" associated with the "attribute information," whose
study defines a research area called "spatial analysis." Many of the ways to
manipulate spatial data are driven by algorithms with no uncertainty
quantification associated with them. When a spatial analysis is statistical,
that is, it incorporates uncertainty quantification, it falls in the research
area called spatial statistics. The primary feature of spatial statistical
models is that nearby attribute values are more statistically dependent than
distant attribute values; this is a paraphrasing of what is sometimes called
the First Law of Geography (Tobler, 1970).
