Newspaper Article

Pretend that you are a journalist writing for the Cambridge Chronicle in May of 1994. A local real estate company has provided you with information on the condominium market over the past five years, namely the table you generated for the first part of this assignment. Based on these statistics, write an article describing the condominium market over the past five years. Analyze the current condo market (1994 sales to date) as well as changes from year to year. Given space constraints (maximum of 800 words), limit your discussion to particularly interesting findings but be sure to discuss at least one measure of location (mean or median) and at least one measure of dispersion (standard deviation or range along with minimum and maximum values). Assume that readers of the Cambridge Chronicle are familiar with the following terminology: mean, median, standard deviation, minimum, maximum, range, and sample. Present one or two tables or figures to help the reader visualize or absorb the information. These may differ from those submitted for the previous assignment. Provide a brief paragraph at the end of your article discussing any caveats or limitations of your analysis.

Articles concerning the Seattle housing market in recent years will be posted.

Scoring Rubric

Statistics

The article provides an accurate description of the data including the data collection procedure, the sample size, and the time frame. This information is explicitly stated near the beginning of the article (i.e., the reader does not need to search for it in a table).

___(3 possible points)

The article presents accurate and relevant statistics. In particular, the author presents the subset of statistics that is most relevant given the focus of the article. Any errors from the original assignment have been corrected.

___(3 possible points)

The article clearly presents selected statistics in illustrative tables or figures. These tables or figures help the reader observe interesting findings or patterns.

___(4 possible points)

Interpretation

The beginning of the article provides sufficient context and convinces readers that the topic is interesting or important. At the end of the article, the author acknowledges at least one major limitation of the analysis.

___(4 possible points)

The article summarizes interesting aspects of the current real estate market (as of 1994) as well as variation over time. The findings are clearly explained and interpreted correctly.

___(6 possible points)

Quality of the Exposition

The article takes the form of a newspaper article. It includes a title, author, and date. It reads like a newspaper article rather than a report or homework assignment.

The article targets the appropriate audience, readers of a local newspaper; i.e., the article is both accessible and interesting to this audience.

The article uses terminology appropriately.

The article contains minimal sentence-level errors.

The article is thorough but concise (within the 800 word limit).

___(10 points total for the quality of the exposition)

___Newspaper Article Total (30 possible points)