Author: Justin

Property Data Entry Guidelines

You can also use Zillow or Trulia (or others) to identify and enter a set of addresses. These sites will not have all the variables in the template but it might be easier to identify your set of address locations on one of these sites and then find the additional details from the County website later.  Here are some links:

NEW: I recorded a screen capture video that might help you use Zillow as a short-cut to the county property database. Click here to see the video. 

Is this helpful? Let me know in the comments section.

http://www.co.pueblo.co.us/cgi-bin/webatrbroker.wsc/savesession.p?dept=404100

http://www.zillow.com

http://www.trulia.com

Excel template for data entry: http://busad265.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=168

When entering the data variables for your 30 selected properties, please note the following:

1. Only include Single Family residential homes. Do NOT include mobile homes, duplexes, multi-family residential (4-plex, apartment building, etc), commercial properties (retail, office, medical, industrial, etc.), non-profit buildings (e.g., schools, churches) or publicly owned property (e.g., government buildings, parks).  If in doubt, use Google Maps Street View (or similar) to try to determine whether the property appears to be a single family home.

2. If you can not determine one of the variables then enter 0 (if the variable is numeric, like square footage or number of rooms) or enter NA (if the variable is text, like Style or Construction).

3. Try to spread out your selection of properties so that they’re not too clustered in one location within the neighborhood. For some neighborhoods this may not be possible. Just do the best you can.

4. Try to select properties with different values. In most neighborhoods there will be expensive properties and inexpensive properties. Get some of each.  This will help you later when you want your model to have the flexibility to determine approximate home values for various home types.

5. Be sure to save a copy of your 30 property data records! Even if you have uploaded the data to the Google Drive spreadsheet please save your 30 properties locally or in your own cloud folder location as a back up. We don’t want to repeat work if Google Drive doesn’t work well for so many shared users. Click here for an Excel template.

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Extra Credit Proposals

In response to several students who didn’t feel they had sufficient time to complete the exam, I am considering the possibility of an extra credit opportunity of some sort.

Please feel free to post suggestions here or send them to me via email.

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Exam #1 Practice

To prepare for Exam #1 tomorrow I would suggest spending time understanding the concepts listed by Chapter in the Exam #1 Review.  In addition, I would suggest spending time practicing these tasks (the 14 listed below) using the various data sets in the black_7e_excel_database or other data sets in the text.

  1. Construct a stem-and-leaf plot.
  2. Construct a frequency distribution table.
  3. Draw a histogram.
  4. Calculate the class midpoints for the bins in the histogram
  5. Draw a cumulative frequency distribution curve.
  6. Calculate the mean.
  7. Calculate the median.
  8. Calculate the mode.
  9. Calculate the range.
  10. Calculate the mean absolute deviation (MAD).
  11. Calculate the variance.
  12. Calculate the standard deviation.
  13. What percent of values are within 1 or 2 standard deviations of the mean?
  14. Assuming the data are approximately normally distributed, what percent of values should be within 2 standard deviations of the mean according to the Empirical Rule?

Good luck!

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Exam #1 Review

For Exam 1 you need to be prepared to answer questions on the following topics:

Chapter 1

  • Define and differentiate between Population, Census, Sample
  • Define and differentiate between Descriptive Statistics and Inferential Statistics
  • Understand levels of data: Nominal, Ordinal, Interval, and Ratio

Chapter 2

  • Define and differentiate between Frequency distribution, Relative frequency, and Cumulative frequency
  • Understand approaches for determining Class Intervals (also referred to as “Bins” in a histogram)
  • Calculate Class midpoints and use to construct Frequency Polygons
  • Construct frequency distribution tables and produce Histograms
  • Calculate Cumulative Frequency and produce an Ogive
  • Understand appropriate use and how to produce stem-and-leaf plots, pie charts, Pareto charts and scatter plots.

Chapter 3

  • Define and calculate Mode, Median, Mean
  • Understand Percentile and Quartile
  • Define and calculate Range, MAD, Variance and Standard Deviation
  • Define and understand how to apply the Empirical Rule

The test format may include True/False, Multiple Choice, and Short Answer questions as you’ve seen on Quizzes. In addition, you should prepare for questions requiring Numerical Calculation, Short Essay, Case Study with business decision interpretation and production of Charts or Graphs similar to what’s been on the Exercises (but without any need for a laptop or other computing device).

Feel free to post questions here and I will do my best to answer in advance or during class Thursday.

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