Rachael's Varied Interests
I’ve been teaching classes on home-buying for years and always talk about the tight positive relationship between perceived school quality and single-family homes prices. Here, using data from the US Census (American Community Survey), the MA Department of Education, and the MLS (Multiple Listing Service) …
In October, a Lexington cyclist was killed by an 18-wheeler in Porter Square. In June, another cyclist was killed in a collision with a landscaping truck in Inman Square. This follows a fatal crash last year in Cambridgeport. After a cyclist was killed by a …
I recently built a Home Price Estimator in Rails to replace a 3rd party service that couldn’t be customized. It uses the Zillow API to obtain a home value “Zestimate” along with a high and low Zestimates. It provides users with an instant value and then …
I signed up to teach Scratch to some kids at my son’s school for “project days”. Rather than make a video game, I wanted to introduce projects that could be useful to the everyday curriculum. Here are a few of the projects I came up …
I’ve been working with some visualization tools lately. This one uses Venngage and data from the Census (American Community Survey). You can scroll over the image to get detailed data. May marks the beginning of the peak rental and buying season. But people move more …
Viewed this blog entry on Teru Kumayana’s work in Afghanistan over 5 1/2 months. An award-winning photojournalist, Kumayana spent 10 years taking photos in Afghanistan for Newsweek and NGOs, and “five years trying to get out.” Realizing that “his photos didn’t end the war,” he …
Just got the news of Steve Jobs’ passing. My husband Hitesh was a huge fan. Here’s a commencement address he gave at Stanford in 2005 that has some profound messages. Also note that Jobs was vegan :-) “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the …