Estimation of First Contact Distribution Functions for Spatial Patterns in S-PLUS

Abstract

An important tool in the exploratory analysis of random patterns are the so called first contact distribution functions. These functions give the distribution of first contact for increasing test sets contained in the void, and provide thereby important information on the “pore” space between particles. An introduction to the use of first contact statistics for exploratory analysis and statistical inference is e.g. given in Stoyan et al. (1987). The statistical aspects of the edge correction techniques presented here are mainly due to Baddeley & Gill (1993), Hansen et al. (1995, 1996) and Chiu & Stoyan (1994).