Any method of fitting equations to data may be called regression. Such equations are valuable for at least two purposes: making predictions and judging the strength of relationships. Because they provide a way of em pirically identifying how a variable is affected by other variables, regression methods have become essential in a wide range of fields, including the social sciences, engineering, medical research and business. Of the various methods of performing regression, least squares is the most widely used. In fact, linear least squares regression is by far the most widely used of any...

Gravity models describe, and hence help predict, spatial flows of commuters, air-travelers, migrants, commodities and even messages. They are one of the oldest and most widely used of all social science models. This book presents an up-to-date, consistent and unified approach to the theory, methods and application of the gravity model - which spans from the axiomatic foundations of such models all the way to practical hints for their use. "I have found no better general method for use in applied research dealing with spatial interaction... It is against this background that the present book...