were assigned a single point at the address. Thus, all thefts occurring at any one shopping
center are assigned the same X and Y coordinates. However, there are situations when the
assignment of a coordinate will not be a good indicator of the hot spot location. For
example, assigning the vehicle theft location to a particular stall in a parking lot will lead
to few, if any, locations coming up more than once. In this case, the mode would not be a
useful statistic at all. Another example is assigning the vehicle theft location for the
parking lot of a multi-building apartment complex to the address of the owner. In this case,
what is a highly concentrated set of vehicle thefts become dispersed because the owners live
in different buildings with different addresses.