As a journalist, I will choose standard deviation because it is clear to show the difference of the mean hosing costs in Vancouver. As a real estate agent, I will choose natural breaks classification, because natural breaks classes are based on natural groupings inherent in the data and it created natural separations in the data. Also this classification is error free. This method will clearly show the areas with similar price. There are ethical implications for my choice of classification method.
Natural break classification: a method of manual data classification that seeks to partition data into classes based on natural groups in the data distribution. Natural breaks occur in the histogram at the low points of valleys. Breaks are assigned in the order of the size of the valleys, with the largest valley being assigned the first natural break.
Equal interval classification: a data classification method that divides a set of attribute values into groups that contain an equal range of values.
Manual break classification: this classification based on natural breaks which adjusts break values along natural grouping of data.
Standard deviation classification: a data classification method that finds the mean value, then places class breaks above and below the mean at intervals of either .25, .5, or 1 standard deviation until all the data values are contained within the classes. Values that are beyond three standard deviations from the mean are aggregated into two classes, greater than three standard deviations above the mean and less than three standard deviations below the mean.
Affordability measure is to show that how many people can afford the housing cost. The housing affordability is a better indicator than housing cost because this measure include the population not only the house.
Dr. Sblomo Angel determine this theme and this is trusted.
From my point, this is a good indicator of city’s livability.
Accomplishment Statement:
Gained knowledge in searching, downloading and inputing spatial and tabular data to GIS software for the analysis on housing affordability in Vancouver and Montreal.