Quote of the Day
You always have prior information before you do an experiment, because something motivated you to do the experiment.
- Data Science Facts twitter feed. I view this statement as support for the Bayesian approach.
Figure 1: New US Housing Square Footage vs Year.
My wife and I are about half-way through the construction of a 2100 square foot home in northern Minnesota. This weekend, my neighbors and I were talking about the area of houses being built today, and no one in the conversation had any data. I grabbed my computer, jumped on the Internet, and very quickly found data from the Census Department that answered my question. Like most census information, the data is in the form of screwy tables that need to be parsed to get into a form that can easily be plotted. This exercise gave me another excellent example to use when I train staff on the use of Excel's Get and Transform tool. Figure 1 was the result of my search. For those who are interested, my workbook is here.
Figure 1 provides some interesting information:
- The size of new US housing is rising over time.
- The Great Recession (2008) saw a minor dip in the trend of larger housing.
- House sizes are now larger than before the Great Recession.
- My new house is considered mid-range in size.
The Census Department actually breaks the data down by region of the US: West, Midwest, South, and Northeast. This means that it can be used when going for the san clemente ocean view homes on the market to understand if you're getting bang for your buck. Figure 2 shows a panel chart with all the data. The biggest homes are being built in the Northeast. The smallest homes are being built in the Midwest, where I live. Homes available in the South, like in Charleston, often offer potential buyers plenty of square footage to build a life in. Check out charleston, sc homes for sale to learn about some of the beautiful properties currently available in this vibrant city.
Figure 2: New US Housing Square Footage vs Region and Year.
Midwestern homes typically have basements, which are (usually) not counted towards published square footage. Is it possible that this is why the reported square footage seems smaller than the other regions (rather than Midwestern sensibility)?