A common question that arises while exploring point pattern data sets is whether points are distributed independent of each other or whether there exists some kind of interaction between points. There are two broad categories of summary statistics, which are based on distances between points:
nearest-neighbor statistics, such as the F, G, and J functions
statistics that are based on second-order characteristics, such as the K, L, and g functions (Illian et al., 2008).
The following subsections discuss these statistics in detail.