Complete the principle.
GIS does not answer questions, it makes spatial arguments ______. Its value is in the overlay: a ______ path shows where movement would actually go given terrain, and where it disagrees with a real road you have found a reason that was not about cost. But georeferencing imports old errors and renders them as ______, so a crisp line is a claim about evidence you may not have.
Word bank: checkable · least-cost · precision · obvious · viewshed
Hints
- The method makes spatial claims falsifiable.
- The precision of the output must not be mistaken for the data's.
Show the answer
GIS does not answer questions, it makes spatial arguments checkable. Its value is in the overlay: a least-cost path shows where movement would actually go given terrain, and where it disagrees with a real road you have found a reason that was not about cost. But georeferencing imports old errors and renders them as precision, so a crisp line is a claim about evidence you may not have.
Checkable, least-cost, precision. Snow’s map is the model for all of it: a rhetorical instrument that made an argument falsifiable, in a dispute he was already having.
Practise GIS and Spatial Analysis
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
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