1. A Project

2. Hypothesis Good things increase the values of houses Bad things reduce them Higher taxes reduce them Better quality improves them

3. Look at the data Are there missing values? Can you use the data if there are missing values? Let’s sort the data and get the data the way that we need it. We’ll lose some data – Those things happen.

4. Some descriptive things Mean – Average Median – Another measure of central tendency. Standard Deviation – Spread Maximum Minimum Look at spreadsheetspreadsheet

5. It’s good to look at these Tells the reader how your data look Tells you how your data look We see a few peculiar observations here. We’ll probably want to leave them out.

6. A couple of regressions Y = b + m 1 X 1 + m 2 X 2 + etc. We may want to start with a simple regression, even though we know that the world is a little more complicated than that. Let’s do Value = b + m1*# of Rooms What do we expect? What do we get? In EXCEL - -2007, we use the LINEST function

7. Is number of rooms the only thing? Probably not Let’s add a couple of other housing characteristics Y = b + m 1 *rooms + m 2 *bathrooms + m 2 *age What do we expect? What do we get