Preview - Modeling U.S. Census Housing Data With Sinusoidal Functions

Activity 3: Modeling with Census Data

In this activity, you will examine data in a spreadsheet and attempt to create an equation that models the data.  You will download data on New Residential Construction found on the United States Census Bureau website.  You will model the data and analyze the strength of your model by examining the sum of the squared errors.

Questions

Please answer the questions below.

Visit this site to gather residential construction data.  Examine data from any time period, but you must use a minimum of 5 years worth of data. 

Make sure that your data is “Not Seasonally Adjusted” as shown in the check box below.

You can examine an initial graph of the data before downloading it by selecting the line chart option as shown below.

The data can be downloaded into a spreadsheet by selecting the “XLS-V” option. Once the data is downloaded into a spreadsheet, use the spreadsheet software to create a scatter plot of the data. 

Save the spreadsheet and upload it.

Upload files that are less than 5MB in size.
File Delete

Develop a sinusoidal model of the data, and incorporate that model into the spreadsheet.  Plot the actual data and model predictions on the same scatter plot.

Submit a file of the model and scatter plot, or a screen shot.

Upload files that are less than 5MB in size.
File Delete

What is the sum of squared errors?

Use your calculation of the sum of the squared errors and use that value to improve your fit. Submit the new file or screen shot.

Upload files that are less than 5MB in size.
File Delete

Notes

These notes will appear on every page in this lesson so feel free to put anything here you'd like to keep track of.