As spatial statistics are essential to the geographical inquiry, accessible and flexible software offering relevant functionalities is highly desired. Python Spatial Analysis Library (PySAL) represents an endeavor towards this end. It is an open-source python library and ecosystem hosting a wide array of spatial statistical and visualization methods. Since its first public release in 2010, PySAL has been applied to address various research questions, used as teaching materials for pedagogical purposes in regular classes and conference workshops serving a wide audience, and integrated into general GIS software such as ArcGIS and QGIS. This entry first gives an overview of the history and new development with PySAL. This is followed by a discussion of PySAL’s new hierarchical structure, and two different modes of accessing PySAL’s functionalities to perform various spatial statistical tasks, including exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial regression, and geovisualization. Next, a discussion is provided on how to find and utilize useful materials for studying and using spatial statistical functions from PySAL and how to get involved with the PySAL community as a user and prospective developer. The entry ends with a brief discussion of future development with PySAL.

As spatial statistics are essential to the geographical inquiry, accessible and flexible software offering relevant functionalities is highly desired. Python Spatial Analysis Library (PySAL) represents an endeavor towards this end. It is an open-source python library and ecosystem hosting a wide array of spatial statistical and visualization methods. Since its first public release in 2010, PySAL has been applied to address various research questions, used as teaching materials for pedagogical purposes in regular classes and conference workshops serving a wide audience, and integrated into general GIS software such as ArcGIS and QGIS. This entry first gives an overview of the history and new development with PySAL. This is followed by a discussion of PySAL’s new hierarchical structure, and two different modes of accessing PySAL’s functionalities to perform various spatial statistical tasks, including exploratory spatial data analysis, spatial regression, and geovisualization. Next, a discussion is provided on how to find and utilize useful materials for studying and using spatial statistical functions from PySAL and how to get involved with the PySAL community as a user and prospective developer. The entry ends with a brief discussion of future development with PySAL.

R is a programming language as well as a computing environment to perform a wide variety of data analysis, statistics, and visualization. One of the reasons for the popularity of R is that it embraces open, transparent scholarship and reproducible research. It is possible to combine content and code in one document, so data, analysis, and graphs are tied together into one narrative, which can be shared with others to recreate analyses and reevaluate interpretations. Different from tools like ArcGIS or QGIS that are specifically built for spatial data, GIS functionality is just one of many things R offers. And while users of dedicated GIS tools typically interact with the software via a point-and-click graphical interface, R requires command-line scripting. Many R users today rely on RStudio, an integrated development environment (IDE) that facilitates the writing of R code and comes with a series of convenient features, like integrated help, data viewer, code completion, and syntax coloring. By using R Markdown, a particular flavor of the Markdown language, RStudio also makes it particularly easy to create documents that embed and execute R code snippets within a text and to render both, static documents (like PDF), as well as interactive html pages, a feature particularly useful for exploratory GIS work and mapping.

R is a programming language as well as a computing environment to perform a wide variety of data analysis, statistics, and visualization. One of the reasons for the popularity of R is that it embraces open, transparent scholarship and reproducible research. It is possible to combine content and code in one document, so data, analysis, and graphs are tied together into one narrative, which can be shared with others to recreate analyses and reevaluate interpretations. Different from tools like ArcGIS or QGIS that are specifically built for spatial data, GIS functionality is just one of many things R offers. And while users of dedicated GIS tools typically interact with the software via a point-and-click graphical interface, R requires command-line scripting. Many R users today rely on RStudio, an integrated development environment (IDE) that facilitates the writing of R code and comes with a series of convenient features, like integrated help, data viewer, code completion, and syntax coloring. By using R Markdown, a particular flavor of the Markdown language, RStudio also makes it particularly easy to create documents that embed and execute R code snippets within a text and to render both, static documents (like PDF), as well as interactive html pages, a feature particularly useful for exploratory GIS work and mapping.

R is a programming language as well as a computing environment to perform a wide variety of data analysis, statistics, and visualization. One of the reasons for the popularity of R is that it embraces open, transparent scholarship and reproducible research. It is possible to combine content and code in one document, so data, analysis, and graphs are tied together into one narrative, which can be shared with others to recreate analyses and reevaluate interpretations. Different from tools like ArcGIS or QGIS that are specifically built for spatial data, GIS functionality is just one of many things R offers. And while users of dedicated GIS tools typically interact with the software via a point-and-click graphical interface, R requires command-line scripting. Many R users today rely on RStudio, an integrated development environment (IDE) that facilitates the writing of R code and comes with a series of convenient features, like integrated help, data viewer, code completion, and syntax coloring. By using R Markdown, a particular flavor of the Markdown language, RStudio also makes it particularly easy to create documents that embed and execute R code snippets within a text and to render both, static documents (like PDF), as well as interactive html pages, a feature particularly useful for exploratory GIS work and mapping.