Best Places to Live in the USA

Final Project Proposal - Finding an Ideal Place to Live

There is a quote, “If you want to catch a fish, you have to go where the fish are!”
In this project, We would try to find good places to live in america. The question We are asking is “What place are ideal for technology and management people with families to live?”

There is always a big demand of technology and management skills everywhere but there are lots of factors that go into making a place an ideal place. Some of the key considerations is always availability of ample work opportunities along with strong wage support. But stronger wages in some areas also come with higher cost of living (like California, Boston or NY) which can be indicated by Consumer Price Index to taxes in certain areas. Along with these, other factors like number of other families, diversity also play a big role in bring up a family. In addition to these, We also plan to search and analyze some additional parameters like availability of recreational facilities like parks in the area.

Inspiration - Finding a Happy Place! :) 

Most people end up where they live as a result of uncontrolled events in their life like a new job. A high paying job is important but cannot be the only criteria of determining where to live. Many a times, where a person ends up might not be the best place for that person and takes a toll on his/her happiness. 

I (Raj) myself ended up living in New York area as as result of events that occured in my life. I used to be a technology consultant travelling to various clients and having a base near major airports was very important for easier travel. NY itself provides a very stable job market but it comes at very high cost of living due to high taxes and extremely high housing cost. Though I dont travel for work anymore, I have created significant roots in NY area as I have lived here for a while.  

But I have often wondered where would I live if I was ever offered a do-over. This project would help me do a very objective analysis and discover what an ideal place for me might look like.

Possible Proposed Sources 

1. Wage Date: https://www.bls.gov/mwe/
2. Consumer Price Index Data: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/
3. Unemployment Data: https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
4. State and National Parks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_state_parks_by_U.S._state
5. Census Data: https://www.census.gov/data/datasets/2017/demo/popest/nation-detail.html#ds
6. Average House Prices: https://www.statisticbrain.com/home-sales-average-price/
7. Job Search Engines: https://wwww.indeed.com

Proposed Methodology 

We have several datasets that I plan to use for various sources.<br> 
We plan to adjust wages datasets from Bureau of Labor Statistics for CPI and other factors like Home Prices, Taxes and Recereation options. We would use several different type of visualization like box plots and sctterplots to view and understand that data. We would compute means and medians for these and use regression to analyze these variables.