Today, we’re looking at the economic indicator, which has a fascinating interplay of variables. For example, I’m looking into how passenger volume at Logan Airport may be used as a barometer for hotel occupancy rates, providing insight into the state of tourist and business travel. Another intriguing area of focus is the interaction between the job economy and the housing sector. A robust job market frequently generates strong home demand, whereas a slow employment market might lead to a drop in real estate activity. Furthermore, the impact of significant development projects on local economies is noteworthy, demonstrating how such initiatives can drive job creation and revitalize the housing market. This essay will untangle these economic strands, illustrating how changes in one area can affect others.
27th November 2023
Today, we delve into the housing market’s dynamics, with a particular focus on the evolution of median housing prices and how they reflect broader economic patterns. Our analysis, akin to a roadmap, reveals the market’s fluctuating highs and lows. Rising prices often indicate a robust economy and high housing demand, signaling buyer confidence, while price dips or plateaus might suggest a cooling market due to economic shifts or changing buyer sentiments. These trends are intertwined with broader economic indicators such as employment and interest rates; for instance, a strong job market can increase home buying capacity, pushing prices up, whereas fluctuating interest rates can influence buyer enthusiasm. We also noted potential seasonal trends in the market, suggesting times of year with more activity that subtly impact prices. Understanding these nuances is crucial, offering insights not just into the real estate sector but the broader economy, providing valuable information for buyers, sellers, investors, and policymakers in an ever-evolving landscape.
20th November 2023
The SARIMA (Seasonal Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) model, an extension of the ARIMA model, is a foundational tool in time series analysis, particularly adept at handling data with seasonal patterns. Comprising Seasonal (S), Autoregressive (AR), Integrated (I), and Moving Average (MA) components, SARIMA captures the seasonality in data, models the relationship between observations and lagged values, integrates differencing for stationarity, and accounts for residual errors from moving averages. The seasonal component is vital for capturing recurring patterns, while the autoregressive component accounts for lagged correlations, the integrated component involves differencing for stationarity, and the moving average component captures short-term fluctuations. The synergy of these components, with their respective orders denoted by parameters like p, d, q, P, D, Q, and m, enables SARIMA’s versatility in predicting future points in time series data, making it especially useful for forecasting in scenarios with seasonal variations. Selecting appropriate orders is crucial in fitting SARIMA models, often guided by autocorrelation and partial autocorrelation plots and an understanding of the data’s seasonal characteristics. Overall, SARIMA serves as a sophisticated and effective tool for time series forecasting and pattern analysis.
17th November 2023
Time series analysis, a fundamental aspect of data science, revolves around the examination of sequentially recorded data points, providing valuable insights across diverse domains such as economics and meteorology. This method, integral for predicting future trends based on historical data, is pivotal in uncovering meaningful statistics, identifying patterns, and facilitating forecasts. The core concepts encompass trend analysis, aimed at recognizing long-term movements, seasonality for pattern identification, noise separation to isolate random variability, and stationarity, assuming consistent statistical properties over time. Employing techniques like descriptive analysis for visual inspection, moving averages to smooth short-term fluctuations and emphasize longer-term trends, and ARIMA models for forecasting, time series analysis plays a crucial role in predicting market trends, optimizing weather forecasts, and enabling strategic business planning. With the evolution of the field, machine learning approaches such as Random Forests and Neural Networks are increasingly integrated, offering robust solutions for intricate time series forecasting challenges.
15th November 2023
In today’s time series analysis class, I learned about key elements and methods crucial for interpreting temporal data. We explored trend analysis, focusing on recognizing whether data exhibits a rising, falling, or constant trend over time. Another important aspect covered was seasonality, which involves understanding and adjusting for repetitive patterns at regular intervals, such as weekly, monthly, or yearly occurrences. Additionally, the concept of stationarity was emphasized, highlighting that a time series is considered stationary when statistical properties remain consistent over time, a prerequisite for many models. Finally, we discussed popular models like ARIMA, SARIMA, and advanced machine learning models like LSTM networks, providing valuable tools for forecasting, pattern recognition, and analyzing the impact of different factors on time-related data.
13th November 2023
In today’s class, we discussed about time series analysis. Time series analysis can be used to forecast parameters in the future by establishing trends from existing data. In today’s session, we saw how time series analysis could have been applied to police shooting data and how shooting trends could have been studied. A second application was demonstrated using data from economic indicators. Time series analysis revealed that comparable trends in hotel prices in different months were seen throughout a 7-year period (2013-2019). We also discussed the new dataset, and I checked it for economic indications. The Boston Redevelopment Authority offered this dataset, which included several economic variables.
10th November 2023
Logistic Regression
Logistic regression is a statistical technique that is commonly used for problems involving binary classification, where the outcomes are dichotomous, such as yes/no or true/false. Unlike linear regression, which predicts continuous outcomes, logistic regression predicts the likelihood of a given input falling into a certain class. This is performed by using the logistic (or sigmoid) function, which converts the answer of a linear equation into a probability value between 0 and 1. Forecasting the likelihood of a patient having a specific ailment in the medical sector, predicting customer turnover in marketing, and determining credit scores in finance are all common applications. Despite being very simple to execute and analyze, and being effective for linearly separable data, logistic regression requires a linear relationship.
Report writing
We’ve initiated the project report and as of today, we’ve concluded the sections covering issues, discussions, and results.
3rd November
Asian Descent Victims (Category A)
Typically, individuals in this category are around 36 years of age. However, there’s a significant age range amongst them. Based on our data, we’re 95% certain that the average age is somewhere between 34 and 38, indicating a broad age distribution.
African Descent Victims (Category B)
The average age for this group is 33. Like the Asian category, there’s noticeable age variability. With a confidence level of 95%, we estimate the age bracket to be between 32 and 33, indicating a more confined age group.
Victims of Hispanic Background (Category H)
On average, victims in this group are 34 years old. Their age spread seems to be quite similar to the African descent category, with a 95% confidence interval between 33 and 34 years.
Victims from Native American Background (Category N)
For this group, the median age hovers around 33, but with a 95% confidence range of 31 to 34 years, highlighting a wider age variation compared to some other categories.
Victims from Various Ethnic Backgrounds (Category O)
This diverse category has an average age of roughly 34 years. The range in age is quite extensive, with a 95% confidence interval from 28 to 39, showcasing the vast age differences within this category.
Victims of European Descent (Category W)
The majority of victims in this group are nearing 40 in age. Their ages, on the whole, seem to be fairly uniform, with a 95% confidence estimate indicating an age bracket of 40 to 41.
1st November 2023
During our analysis of fatal confrontations with law enforcement, we delved into the interplay between factors like age, racial background, and threat levels with signs of psychological concerns.
Our investigation pinpointed a distinct association between age and markers of mental health. The t-test highlighted a significant age variation among individuals exhibiting or not exhibiting mental health symptoms, producing a t-statistic of 8.51 and an almost negligible p-value. This underscores the profound linkage between age and mental health anomalies in these scenarios.
Regarding racial background, we navigated through initial data anomalies and subsequently executed a chi-square analysis. This analysis showcased a considerable connection between racial background and markers of mental health, yielding a chi-square value of 171.23 and a p-value around 3.98×10^-35.
In a similar vein, there was a marked relationship between the level of threat assessed and indicators of mental health, as shown by a chi-square value of 24.48 and a p-value approaching 4.82×10^-6.