Tag Archives: data interpretation

New homes shrink 40 sq ft; industry not sure what it means

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The median size of new American homes shrunk during the second quarter – but barely:

Of the 206,000 homes that went under construction in the second quarter, the median size was 2,479 square feet, according to Commerce Department data released Tuesday. That was 40 square feet smaller—or about the size of a walk-in closet—than the high set in the first quarter.

What exactly this means is unclear.

Entry-level buyers tend to purchase smaller homes. In recent years, many younger people who otherwise would buy a home have opted to rent due to stringent mortgage-qualification standards, relatively sluggish job and wage growth, mounting student debt and preferences for living near city centers, where land and homes are more pricey…

Several economists and builders foresee a gradual leveling off or decline of the median size of newly built homes. Builders such as D.R. Horton Inc., KB Home, Meritage Homes Corp., PulteGroup Inc. and Century Communities Inc. have reported early signs of first-time buyers returning to the housing market in the past year…

David Crowe, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, foresees a “moderation” of the median size of newly built homes as more first-time buyers come into the market. But he added that it will take a long time for the shift to be reflected in the national median-size figure, because the factors buoying first-time buyers—a loosening of mortgage-qualification standards and growth in jobs and wages—are progressing slowly…

“If anything, we’re seeing people trying to get into the largest home they can afford,” said Marcie DePlaza, a division president at GL Homes, a Florida builder that anticipates selling 1,000 homes this year at prices ranging from about $200,000 to $2 million. “With interest rates as low as they are, people can push to buy the biggest [home] in the group” that they are considering.

In other words, the data could be taken as pointing in multiple directions. A number of builders and others are at least preparing themselves for the possibility that more Americans, particularly entry-level buyers, want smaller homes. Yet, the big homes make a lot of money and wealthier buyers are a known quantity.

In situations like this, I imagine the housing industry would try to hedge its bets both ways. Playing it conservatively might work better in the long run though it might mean that some opportunities are lost. Some of these trends – such as Americans eventually wanting smaller homes – have been discussed for decades. Still, it takes time for some of these factors to work themselves out such as the behavior of younger homebuyers or the overall state of the economy or whether homeownership is promoted by politicians.

Sociologists help Catholic Church understand itself but the data is not always welcome

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Here is an interesting look at the reactions to the findings of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate:

Sociology wasn’t always viewed kindly when applied to church matters. Cardinal Roger Mahony (now retired) of Los Angeles once assessed as “nonsense” research done in the early 1990s by Richard Schoenherr of the University of Wisconsin predicting an impending priest shortage. Mahony said the work did the church a “disservice and “presumes that the only factors at work are sociology and statistical research. … We live by God’s grace, and our future is shaped by God’s design for his church — not by sociologists.” The predictions of the priest shortage, by the way, were remarkably accurate and decades ahead of the reality.

Not all church leaders feel that way, of course, and it was a prominent archbishop, Boston Cardinal Richard Cushing, who gathered other bishops and superiors of religious communities and donated $50,000 to start CARA…

Even the most convincing data can be upsetting when it gets in the way of a favorite narrative. Gaunt cautions that CARA’s inquiries can lead to rather pedestrian conclusions. For instance, he said, the center began to notice a drop in baptisms. The major theories being advanced in some quarters to explain the phenomenon blamed secularization and an anti-religious U.S. culture.

What didn’t fit, however, was CARA’s understanding that the decline was occurring in areas with lots of new Catholics. “This is in Dallas or Houston or Phoenix,” said Gaunt. “There are no parishes you can walk to. They all drive. And they’re overwhelmed. And this is where we’re beginning to find the drop in the number of baptisms. The data would suggest it’s not secularization — it’s parking. If you’re there with a baby, and you’re going to have to show up an hour early to try to get a parking spot and get in,” he said, that could cut into attendance and those early sacraments.

Some good discussion of how data can be used used by religious organizations: sometimes it goes well and sometimes the data is not welcome. I would think large organizations would want as much information as they could get but there are several issues when social scientists get involved. One, data doesn’t interpret itself – it simply provides more information that has to be acted upon. Second, interpretations of the data data can contradict folk theories and threaten those who hold such ideas.  Third, sociology can be viewed as antithetical to God’s work, either through its emphasis on society and humans or its tendencies toward liberal theories. Yet, hopefully good things can come from this marriage of sociological findings and church work.

Record 5 homes over $100 million sold in the world last year. Is this really a trend?

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The luxury housing market is booming and a new record was set last year for sales of $100 million+ homes:

Demand for mega-mansions and penthouses has accelerated as wealthy buyers seek havens for their cash and search for alternative investments such as art and collectible real estate, according to a report Thursday by Christie’s International Real Estate, owned by auction house Christie’s. Five homes sold for more than $100 million last year, with at least 20 more on the market with nine-figure asking prices, the brokerage said…

Just one home sale exceeded the $100 million mark in 2013, following four such transactions in 2012 and three in 2011, Christie’s reported.

While I have seen other corroborating evidence that this segment of the market is indeed doing well, how much of a trend or record is this went the number of transactions throughout the world increased to five? Here is the trend from the last four years: 3, 4, 1, 5. So if 2014 was a record year, was 2013 a big plunge in the market? The number of cases is so small and the timeline is so short that it is difficult to draw any substantial conclusions. Yet, suggesting a record occurred makes for a better headline or story…

Hillary Clinton’s biggest urban Facebook fan base is Baghdad?

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Melding political, social media, and urban analysis, a look at Hillary Clinton’s Facebook fans has an interesting geographic dimension:

Hillary Clinton’s Facebook pages have an unexpected fan base. At least 7 percent of Clinton’s Facebook fans list their hometown as Baghdad, way more than any other city in the world, including in the United States.

Vocativ’s exclusive analysis of Clinton’s Facebook fan statistics yielded a number of surprises. Despite her reputation as an urban Democrat favored by liberal elites, Iraqis and southerners are more likely to be a Facebook fan of Hillary than people living on America’s coasts. And the Democratic candidate for president has one of her largest followings in the great red-state of Texas.

While Chicago and New York City, both with 4 per cent of fans, round out the top three cities for Hillary’s Facebook base, Texas’ four major centers—Houston (3 percent), Dallas (3 percent), Austin (2 percent) and San Antonio (2 percent)—contain more of her Facebook supporters. Los Angeles with 3 percent of her fans, and Philadelphia and Atlanta, each with 2 percent, round out the Top 10 cities for Facebook fans of Hillary.

On a per capita basis, in which Vocativ compared a town’s population to percentage of Hillary’s likes, people living in cities and towns in Texas, Kentucky, Ohio, Arkansas, North Carolina and Wisconsin were the most likely to be her fans on Facebook than any other American residents.

This hints at the broader knowledge we might gain from social media and should beg the question of how this information could be well used. I imagine this information could be used for political ends. Is this a curiosity? Is this something the Clinton campaign would want to change? Would this influence the behavior of other voters? The article itself is fairly agnostic about what this means.

This sounds like data mining and here is how the company behind this – Vocativ – describes its mission:

Vocativ is a media and technology venture that explores the deep web to discover original stories, hidden perspectives, emerging trends, and unheard voices from around the world. Our audience is the young, diverse, social generation that wants to share what’s interesting and what’s valuable. We reach them with a visual language, wherever they are naturally gathering…

Our proprietary technology, Verne, allows us to search and monitor the deep web to spot breaking news quickly, and discover stories that otherwise might not be told. Often we know what we’re looking for, such as witnesses near the front lines of a conflict or data related to an emerging political movement. We also uncover unexpected information, like pro-gun publications giving away assault rifles to fans of their Facebook pages.

Is this the Freakonomicization of journalism?

Debate the data: are millionaires leaving New Jersey in large numbers?

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A new report suggests some millionaires have left New Jersey:

New Jersey lost roughly 10,000 millionaire households, but those affluent families who remain still account for 7 percent of the whole state, the researchers said…

A high tax rate for top earners may have led to some migration out of the state, according to David Thompson, the lead researcher.

By losing those 10,000 millionaire households, the Garden State returns to third, where it was ranked from 2010 through 2012. Since the last report, Connecticut lost only 1,000 millionaire households, as it vaulted to the second spot, the group said.

And alternative interpretations:

“If millionaires were truly trying to flee NJ’s top income tax rate, we probably would have lost a lot more when the rates were higher,” Whiten said. “But during the 2000s NJ almost doubled the number of tax filers above $500K at a time when the tax rate was increased on them, twice.”Wealth has been reported leaving the Garden State before, however. In 2010, a Boston College team found that in a five-year period some $70 billion in total wealth left for other parts of the U.S.

Last year, a report by the Morristown-based Regent Atlantic wealth management firm released a report entitled “Exodus on the Parkway” that claimed so-called “tax migration” began in 2004, with the state’s passage of the “millionaire’s tax.” The report found that a couple with an income of $650,000 who moved to Pennsylvania would save some $21,000 per year in taxes, adding up to $1.65 million over 25 years, if invested. Most families with incomes of $500,000 per year or more were departing New Jersey for either the Keystone State or Florida, the Regent Atlantic authors added.

“The phenomena is there, that people are leaving – but people in New Jersey have high incomes,” said Joseph Seneca, professor of economics at the Edward Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.

My interpretation: no one really knows whether 10,000 millionaire households leaving is a big number or not. If the true figure was 5,000, might those who oppose higher taxes still argue that taxes are pushing a large number to leave? And if the true number was 15,000, would this be enough evidence that taxes really are making a difference? Because this appears to be an ideologically laden debate, each side can look at the 10,000 figure and make a reasonable interpretation.

Here are two ways around the issue that both make use of comparisons. The first way would be to compare the New Jersey leavings over the years. Is the 10,000 figure more or less than years past? The second would involve comparing the leaving rate across states. This new report looks at millionaires per capita across states but why not compare the leaving rate per capita across states? Then, people in New Jersey could decide whether they are concerned with having similar or different rates compared to states with other policies.

Calories, as a statistic, don’t mean much to consumers

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A group of scientists is suggesting food packaging should replace calories with data on how much exercise is required to burn off that food:

A 500ml bottle of Coke, for example, contains 210 calories, more than a 10th of the daily recommended intake for a woman.

But US scientists think that statistic is ignored by most people and does not work as a health message.

Instead, telling them that it would take a 4.2 mile run or 42-minute walk to burn off the calories is far more effective.

The researchers, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, found that teenagers given the information chose healthier drinks or smaller bottles…

They say that if a menu tells you a double cheeseburger will take a 5.6-mile hike before the calories are burned off, most people would rather choose a smaller hamburger which would require a walk of 2.6 miles…

Study leader Professor Sara Bleich said: ‘People don’t really understand what it means to say a typical soda has 250 calories.

The public vaguely knows what a calorie is – a measure of the amount of energy in food. However, the technical definition is difficult to translate into real life since a calorie is defined as “the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C.” (Side note: does this mean Americans are even worse in judging calories due to not using the metric system?) This proposal does just that, translating the scientific term into one that practically makes sense to the average person. And, having such information could make comparisons easier.

I would wonder if the new exercise data would have diminishing returns over time. A new interpretation might catch people’s attention for a while. But, as time goes on, what is really the difference between that 3.6 mile burger and that 2.6 mile burger?

2014 Democrats echo 2012 Republicans in arguing political polls are skewed

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Apparently, this is a strategy common to both political parties: when the poll numbers aren’t in your favor on the national stage, argue that the numbers are flawed.

The [Democratic] party is stoking skepticism in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, providing a mirror image of conservative complaints in 2012 about “skewed” polls in the presidential race between President Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.

Democrats who do not want their party faithful to lose hope — particularly in a midterm election that will be largely decided on voter turnout — are taking aim at the pollsters, arguing that they are underestimating the party’s chances in November.

At the center of the storm, just as he was in 2012, is Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com…

This year, Democrats have been upset with Silver’s predictions that Republicans are likely to retake the Senate. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) mocked Silver at a fundraising luncheon in Seattle that was also addressed by Vice President Biden, according to a White House pool report on Thursday.

“Pollsters and polling have sort of elbowed their way to the table in terms of coverage,” Berkovitz said. “Pollsters have become high profile: They are showing up on cable TV all the time.”

This phenomenon, in turn, has led to greatly increased media coverage of the differences between polling analyses. In recent days, a public spat played out between Silver and the Princeton Election Consortium’s Sam Wang, which in turn elicited headlines such as The Daily Beast’s “Why is Nate Silver so afraid of Sam Wang?”

There are lots of good questions to ask about political polls, including looking at their sampling, the questions they ask, and how they make their projections. Yet, that doesn’t automatically mean that everything has been manipulated to lead to a certain outcome.

One way around this? Try to aggregate among various polls and projections. RealClearPolitics has a variety of polls in many races for the 2014 elections. Aggregation also helps get around the issue of celebrity where people like Nate Silver build careers on being right – until they are wrong.

At the most basic level, the argument about flawed polls is probably about turning out the base to vote. If some people won’t vote because they think their vote won’t overturn the majority, then you have to find ways to convince them that their vote still matters.

A big uptick in large homes constructed in recent years? Maybe

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With the average size of new American homes at record levels, just how many big homes have been built in recent years?

As a result, the market for smaller homes, of 1,400 square-feet and less, has shrunk to just 4% of homes built. That compares with 9% in 2005…

Meanwhile, extremely large houses — 4,000 square feet and up — have been making up a much larger slice of the new homes built.

Last year, these mega homes accounted for more than 9% of new homes. In 2005, they represented 6.6% of homes built.

Houses that are a little smaller but still verging on mansion territory, those between 3,000 and 4,000 square feet, made up 21.7% of new homes in 2013, up from 15.6% in 2005.

So these are changes in the housing market: more large homes built in recent years, fewer small houses constructed. But, are they big changes? The decrease in homes under 1,400 square feet is 5%, the rise in homes over 4,000 square feet is just over 3%, and the increase in homes three to four-thousand square feet is somewhat bigger at 6%. Does this mean McMansions are back? The data is up for interpretation with figures that could likely support either side: there are shifts taking place versus the percentage changes are limited.

How 46 ISO standards for world cities could be used

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The International Organization for Standardization has approved a list of 46 key indicators by which to compare cities around the world:

But now, the first-ever set of ISO standards for world cities has been created. And the implications are dramatic. City policymakers will have objective standards to compare their services and performance with other cities around the world. And just as significant, the people of cities — civic, business organizations, ordinary citizens — will be able to access the same new global standards. This means they can ask city leaders tough questions, stoking debate about their own city’s performance on the basis of verified measures ranging from education to public safety to water and sanitation…

But many cities, up to now, haven’t recorded data on all those indicators. Or if they did, they were inconsistent in their precise definitions, making it difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons of cities across continents and diverse societies. Many organizations, in independent media and special interest groups, issue rankings of cities. But in 2008, when the Global Cities Indicators Facility at the University of Toronto compared rankings that had been applied to seven prominent world cities, it turned out that only six of the 1,200 indicators being applied were exactly the same.

Now, cities everywhere will have an internationally agreed upon set of standards indicating data that should be collected, and the definitions and criteria to use in collecting it. They won’t be legally required to do so, but they’re likely to be under pressure from citizen, business, academic and other groups insisting they use the ISO standards so that their performance can be benchmarked clearly against peer cities, both in-country and — in today’s increasingly globalized economy — across the globe…

A technical committee was formed. With McCarney’s institute acting as a de facto secretariat, meetings were held in urban centers from Japan to France and Britain to Canada. Comments were received from cities worldwide — “fantastic for us, really strengthening the set of indicators we started with back in 2008,” notes McCarney. The analysis winnowed down and rejuggled the list to 100 candidate indicators. Finally, 46 (see them all here) were selected as well-tested core measures that cities must report to prove they’re in conformance with the new ISO 37210 standard.

It will be interesting to see how the data is used. Here are some options:

1. The article suggests having clear points of comparison will push cities to compete. Yet, not all the cities are directly comparable. The article addresses this by suggesting there could be different tiers of comparisons – the top global cities and developing world cities shouldn’t be compared head-to-head.

2. Is this going to be another set of information that is primarily for boosters? Imagine a city in Western Europe could say that it is one of the best of the world in low levels of particulates in the air and then trumpets this in a marketing campaign. Similarly, the media might eat up this information.

3. National or international bodies could use this information to enforce certain guidelines. If there is reliable information on air pollution, outside bodies could then claim other objective standards need to be met.

4. Maybe this is primarily for academics. Consistent data across cities and countries can often be difficult to come by so having set standards and data collection could help. This could be particularly useful for tracking change in developing world cities.

Settling on how to measure data is a start but it is part of a longer process that then includes figuring out how to interpret and use such data.

Sociologists = people who look at “boring data compiled during endless research”

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If this is how a good portion of the public views what sociologists do, sociologists may be in trouble:

Anthony Campolo is a sociologist by trade, used to looking at boring data compiled during endless research.

Data collection and analysis may not be glamorous but a statement like this suggests sociologists may have some PR issues. Data collection and analysis are often time consuming and even tedious. But, there are reasons for working so hard to get data and do research: so sociologists can make substantiated claims about how the social world works. Without rigorous methods, sociologists would just be settling for interpretation, opinion, or anecdotal evidence. For example, we might be left with stories like that of a homeless man in Austin, Texas who was “testing”  which religious groups contributed more money to him. Of course, his one case tells us little to nothing.

Perhaps this opening sentence should look something like this: time spent collecting and analyzing data will pay off in stronger arguments.