Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
More than half of all new homes in the United States are sold with a fireplace (or several), according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction. Still, as the map below shows, fireplaces are more popular in some states than others.
Continue reading Fireplaces are getting less popular in smaller homes
R.T. Young, Ph.D. Business Economics
One of the many things America does well is create wealth. Since 1960, the total wealth created in the U.S. has grown from around $2 trillion to around $75 trillion today.
The topic here is relatively straightforward: over the past 50 years, where have people gotten richer quicker than other areas, and how has that changed over time?
Continue reading Where Have People Gotten Richer and Where Have People Gotten Poorer?
Pavel Prikhodko, Ph.D. Machine Learning
War is one of the scariest things that humans have ever produced. People who survived wars are trying hard to find themselves and live an ordinary life after experiencing the atrocities of war. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 21.2 million veterans in the U.S. in 2015. The largest number of the U.S. veterans are those who served in the Vietnam War, while the largest number of female veterans served during Post 9/11. The total number of people who served during World War II, Vietnam and the Korean War was 9.4 million. More than 95 percent of these veterans are men averaging at least 55 years of age.
Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
It seems that new U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t believe in global warming. At least, he has made clear his intent to undo some, if not all, of President Obama’s climate change policies. But just how important is climate change? And does global warming affect the country?
Alexander Fishkov, Ph.D. student Computer Science
Protecting your personal data on the web was always a big concern. Right now, a lot of sensitive information about an individual can be accessed using the internet, like social media and online banking services. Your passwords become the first line of defense against cyber-criminals of any kind. Having a good password has become a must. Most people don’t even think about going out without locking the house, and many will not leave a car window down in an unknown neighborhood. The situation is very different on the internet, however; many people still use “qwerty” or “123456” as their password, and it is often written down on a piece of paper stored near their PC.
Continue reading Passwords on the internet: publicly available dataset
Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
For our final post on the geographical and industry sector patterns for the small businesses, we focus on the most populated U.S. region, the South. We already looked at the general business patterns in an earlier post; now we will focus on small businesses in the South.
Continue reading Small businesses in the South are still quite unpopular
Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
The official Social Security website provides data on the popularity of thousands of names, including very uncommon names. It includes every single name mentioned at least five times during any given year. This allows us to compare the distributions of names by popularity across several decades.
It is relatively common knowledge that the diversity of baby names has been increasing throughout the century. To illustrate this, let’s take a look at the number of the most popular names accounting for the largest percentage of all births.
Continue reading Uncommon names are more popular in California and Texas
Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
In this post, we examine how the U.S. manufacturing sector has changed in the last decade. As we found in the previous posts, it is one of the sectors that suffered the most significant decreases in total employment numbers.
Continue reading The widespread decrease in the U.S. manufacturing sector
Kristine Barseghyan, Ph.D. (ABD) Social Sciences
In this post, we’ll examine the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2012 Consumer Expenditure Report. After almost four years of abstinence, Americans started spending again. In 2012, the average expenditures per consumer rose to $51,442, which is 3.5 percent higher than in 2011. It exceeded the highest spending recorded in 2008, after which the effects of the recession led to a low of $48,109 in 2010. In 2011, when the average expenditures and prices for goods and services had almost the same increase rate, there was hardly any increase in actual expenditures at all. In 2012, expenditures rose more than prices.
Continue reading Our expenditures and debts on the rise, again
Andrey Kamenov, Ph.D. Probability and Statistics
Today we take a look at the seasonal aspect of peer-to-peer lending. Thanks to data provided by Prosper (https://www.prosper.com/tools/DataExport.aspx) we can perform a quantitative analysis of loan charge-off times and find if there are any seasonal patterns present.
First, let’s take a look at the lifespan distribution of a defaulted loan. We see that the default rates increase significantly during the first months, with the largest number of defaults registered in the eighth and ninth months after origination.
Continue reading Seasonal lending patterns: when are the most loans defaulted?
