The objective of the module 2 project on my Flatiron data science course was to use a multivariate linear regression model to predict the sale price of houses in King County, Washington as accurately as possible. The business case I had constructed around the project was to assume that I was advising a new firm of real estate agents who want to start a business in King County, but were strangers to King County’s real estate market and geography.

Furthermore, the non-technical aspects of the project, where I expand on the business case I had constructed around the project, is covered by my video here:

The grist for this blog comes from the frustration gnawing at my mind throughout the course of the project that I had never been to King County before. Just like my fictional real estate firm, I had no feel for its geography — its roads, its distances and its views. Looking at the numbers in a pandas dataframe was well and good, but short of travelling there yourself, the best way to bring those numbers alive was to plot a map.

#data-science #geography #flatiron-school