This exercise involves the Boston housing data set.

(a) To begin, load in the Boston data set. The Boston data set is part of the MASS library in R.

>library(MASS)

Now the data set is contained in the object Boston.

> Boston

Read about the data set:

> ?Boston

How many rows are in this data set? How many columns? What do the rows and columns represent?

(b) Make some pairwise scatterplots of the predictors (columns) in this data set. Describe your

findings.

(c) Are any of the predictors associated with per capita crime rate? If so, explain the relationship.

(d) Do any of the suburbs of Boston appear to have particularly high crime rates? Tax rates? Pupil-

teacher ratios? Comment on the range of each predictor.

(e) How many of the suburbs in this data set bound the Charles river?

(f) What is the median pupil-teacher ratio among the towns in this data set?

(g) Which suburb of Boston has the lowest median value of owner-occupied homes? What are the

values of the other predictors for that suburb, and how do those values compare to the overall ranges

for those predictors? Comment on your findings.

(h) In this data set, how many of the suburbs average more than seven rooms per dwelling? More

than eight rooms per dwelling? Comment on the suburbs that average more than eight rooms per

dwelling.