Boston House Prices

A (corrected) dataset derived from information collected by the US Census Service concerning housing in Boston, Massachusetts (1978).

Installation

npm install @stdlib/datasets-pace-boston-house-prices

Usage

var dataset = require( '@stdlib/datasets-pace-boston-house-prices' );

dataset()

Returns a (corrected) dataset derived from information collected by the US Census Service concerning housing in Boston, Massachusetts (1978).

var data = dataset();
/* returns
    [
        {
            'obs': 1,
            'town': 'Nahant',
            'town_id': 0,
            'tract': 2011,
            'lon': -70.955000,
            'lat': 42.255000,
            'medv': 24.00,
            'cmedv': 24.00,
            'crim': 0.00632,
            'zn': 18.00,
            'indus': 2.310,
            'chas': 0,
            'nox': 0.5380,
            'rm': 6.5750,
            'age': 65.20,
            'dis': 4.0900,
            'rad': 1,
            'tax': 296.0,
            'ptratio': 15.30,
            'b': 396.90,
            'lstat': 4.98
        },
        ...
    ]
*/

Notes

• The data consists of 21 attributes:

  • obs: observation number
  • town: town name
  • town_id: town identifier
  • tract: tract identifier
  • lon: longitude
  • lat: latitude
  • medv: median value of owner-occupied homes in $1000's
  • cmedv: corrected median value of owner-occupied homes in $1000's
  • crim: per capita crime rate by town
  • zn: proportion of residential land zoned for lots over 25,000 square feet
  • indus: proportion of non-retail business acres per town
  • chas: Charles River dummy variable (1 if tract bounds river; 0 otherwise)
  • nox: nitric oxides concentration (parts per 10 million)
  • rm: average number of rooms per dwelling
  • age: proportion of owner-occupied units built prior to 1940
  • dis: weighted distances to five Boston employment centers
  • rad: index of accessibility to radial highways
  • tax: full-value property-tax rate per $10,000
  • ptratio: pupil-teacher ratio by town
  • b: 1000(Bk-0.63)^2 where Bk is the proportion of blacks by town
  • lstat: percent lower status of the population

• The dataset can be used to predict two dependent variables: 1) nitrous oxide level and 2) median home value.

• The median home value field seems to be censored at 50.00 (corresponding to a median value of $50,000). Censoring is suggested by the fact that the highest median value of exactly $50,000 is reported in 16 cases, while 15 cases have values between $40,000 and $50,000. Values are rounded to the nearest hundred. Harrison and Rubinfeld do not, however, mention any censoring.

• The dataset contains eight corrections to miscoded median values, as documented by Gilley and Pace (1996).

• The dataset augments the original dataset from Harrison and Rubinfeld (1978) by including geo-referencing and spatial estimation for each observation.

Examples

var Plot = require( '@stdlib/plot' );
var dataset = require( '@stdlib/datasets-pace-boston-house-prices' );

var data;
var plot;
var opts;
var x;
var y;
var i;

data = dataset();

// Extract housing data...
x = [];
y = [];
for ( i = 0; i < data.length; i++ ) {
    x.push( data[ i ].rm );
    y.push( data[ i ].cmedv );
}

// Create a plot instance:
opts = {
    'lineStyle': 'none',
    'symbols': 'closed-circle',
    'xLabel': 'Average Number of Rooms',
    'yLabel': 'Corrected Median Value',
    'title': 'Number of Rooms vs Median Value'
};
plot = new Plot( [ x ], [ y ], opts );

// Render the plot:
console.log( plot.render( 'html' ) );

References

• Harrison, David, and Daniel L Rubinfeld. 1978. "Hedonic housing prices and the demand for clean air." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 5 (1): 81–102. doi:10.1016/0095-0696(78)90006-2.
• Gilley, Otis W., and R.Kelley Pace. 1996. "On the Harrison and Rubinfeld Data." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 31 (3): 403–5. doi:10.1006/jeem.1996.0052.
• Pace, R. Kelley, and Otis W. Gilley. 1997. "Using the Spatial Configuration of the Data to Improve Estimation." The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics 14 (3): 333–40. doi:10.1023/A:1007762613901.

License

The data files (databases) are licensed under an Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication & License 1.0 and their contents are licensed under a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal. The software is licensed under Apache License, Version 2.0.

See Also

• @stdlib/datasets-pace-boston-house-prices-cli: CLI package for use as a command-line utility.
• @stdlib/datasets-harrison-boston-house-prices: A dataset derived from information collected by the US Census Service concerning housing in Boston, Massachusetts (1978).
• @stdlib/datasets-harrison-boston-house-prices-corrected: A (corrected) dataset derived from information collected by the US Census Service concerning housing in Boston, Massachusetts (1978).

Notice

This package is part of stdlib, a standard library for JavaScript and Node.js, with an emphasis on numerical and scientific computing. The library provides a collection of robust, high performance libraries for mathematics, statistics, streams, utilities, and more.

For more information on the project, filing bug reports and feature requests, and guidance on how to develop stdlib, see the main project repository.

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