The Measuring Geographic Distributions toolset

The Measuring Geographic Distributions toolset in the Spatial Statistics Tools toolbox contains a set of tools that provide descriptive geographic statistics, including the Central Feature, Directional Distribution, Linear Directional Mean, Mean Center, Median Center, and Standard Distance tools. Together, this toolset provides a set of basic statistical exploration tools. These basic descriptive statistics are used only as a starting point in the analysis process. The following screenshot displays the output from the Directional Distribution tool for an analysis of crime data:

The Central Feature, Mean Center, and Median Center tools all provide similar functionality. Each creates a feature class containing a single feature that represents the centrality of a geographic dataset.

The Linear Directional Mean tool identifies the mean direction, length, and geographic center for a set of lines. The output of this tool is a feature class with a single linear feature.

The Standard Distance and Directional Distribution tools are similar, in that they both measure the degree to which features are concentrated or dispersed around the geometric center, but the Directional Distribution tool, also known as the Standard Deviational Ellipse, is superior as it also provides a measure of directionality in the dataset.