Is Democracy in Trouble? A simple question often asked is split into two parts: is my country a democracy? If so, is it a stable one? A democracy, if going by the Varieties of Democracy Project's definition of a liberal democracy, is defined as a country with a negative view of political power. It focuses on protecting individual rights against the state and the majority. This protection is achieved through a strong rule of law and checks and balances that both limit excess executive power. When one thinks of a strong, stable liberal democracy, countries that come to mind are normally those l ..read more

Machine learning (ML) prediction models aren’t just used to predict one particular outcome. Sometimes the goal is to understand how variables in a complex system interact to produce an outcome. In real estate, for example, investors might use a model that predicts home value to understand how a variety of home characteristics (aka features) like location, size and style influence home prices. They’d focus on feature importance (FI) metrics: how important each characteristic was to the final prediction. Understanding FI is a common business case for machine learning. In fact, helping a house f ..read more

Image by freepik Rationale With constant changes in the economy, finding an appropriately priced house is becoming more and more challenging. The task is already challenging enough with each house seeming to have a justification to their respective price tag, oftentimes contradicting with justifications from other listings. Why is this house more expensive even though it has less livable square footage and is older? Does an older house entail a higher price? What model is used to price housing listings? These questions are often answered by real estate agents and insurance companies/property a ..read more

Pneumonia, a common respiratory infection characterized by inflammation of the lungs, continues to be a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, particularly among vulnerable populations such as young children, the elderly, and individuals with compromised immune systems. Prompt and accurate diagnosis of pneumonia is essential for initiating appropriate treatment and preventing severe complications. However, traditional methods of diagnosing pneumonia from chest X-rays often rely on manual interpretation by radiologists, which can be time-consuming, subjective, and prone to errors ..read more

Introduction In 2007, the startup LendingClub became the first peer-to-peer lending platform to offer registered investors the opportunity to purchase personal loans. Borrowers for these loans would apply for an amount between $1,000 - $40,000 and would either be approved or denied by LendingClub. The loans typically held a term of 3 or 5 years, and could be issued for a variety of purposes such as financing a major purchase or debt consolidation. Once approved, the loans would be issued a grade and placed into a catalog for investors to browse.   Investors registered at LendingClub were ..read more

Introduction Determining the market value of a home can be a challenging task. To the untrained, the process may seem arbitrary. How can anyone consider all the unique aspects of a property to compare them to all others in the local area? Does a ranch style home with low square footage but modern appliances hold more value than a three story house that has begun to show signs of aging? Does a pool or garage hold more weight to improve property value? Is location truly as critical for home value as people claim it to be? Anyone who does not hold active interest in the real estate market would l ..read more

Github Slides Introduction In this project, I am an Iowa-born, real estate flipper and I’m looking for a data-driven model to maximize the return on my investment. To achieve that goal, I need to answer these research questions: How can we identify undervalued homes using data? What are the important levers for sale prices, and are any easier/cheaper to optimize? To answer these essential questions, the following high-level methodology was executed as shown in the graph below: Figure 1. High-level methodology for Ames ProjectData Collection For this project, Kaggle’s Ames Housing Data ..read more

Introduction In the semiconductor manufacturing industry a silicon wafer is processed from bare silicon to a myriad (>10,000's) of chips. The processing steps necessary to achieve this are typically in the hundreds (as shown below). Within these steps there are also several measurement steps. These steps typically fall into three categories: MEA / MTR: Physical measurement of a section of a chip. (Returns a number) PLY: Picture of a section of a wafer or a chip. (Returns a picture) ELEC: Electrical measurement of performance of a chip. (returns a number) For our work we will focus on the M ..read more

Introduction It is often stated that the responsibilities of an institution are to strengthen their academic credentials, provide an enriching experience for their students, and ensure that their students succeed. An Office of Academic Success is one that focuses on these factors, and tries to ensure continuing completion and retention rate. Retention rate is defined, by the Department of Education, as the proportion of those students who returned from one Fall semester into the next. But why is retention rate important? Schools with higher retention have higher completion rates, which means ..read more

How can we advise better real estate purchasing decisions in Ames, Iowa? Introduction Buying a house can be a life-changing decision for a first-time home buyer, or it could just be another business purchase for house flippers. Even though these purchasing decisions have been around long before the emergence of widespread computer usage and machine learning, we can utilize technologies to enhance the choices we make when it comes to substantial investments. Dean De Cock used this data as a replacement for the traditional Boston Housing Dataset in regression classes. His original study forms th ..read more