How many states of the world can you name? Can you find them on a map? Old-style geography sometimes required memorization of countries and their capitals. Human geographers now emphasize a thematic approach that studies the locations of activities in the world, the reasons for particular spatial distributions, and the significance of the arrangements. Despite this change in emphasis, you still need to know the locations of states. Without such knowledge, you lack a basic frame of reference—knowing where things are.