FOR PROFESSOR DAVIDSON ONLY

y1_val to y5_val

Year1 to year5 estimated business sale price if sold that year.

y1_prf to y5_prf

Year1 to year5 business profit/loss that year.

mkt_idx_1 through mkt_idx_5 “Market Index”

Business property value relative to local real estate market index that year. Based on a common level of appraisal. Local always equals 1. Business valuation index is relative to 1.

mkt_class

Type of real estate market context of the business, by zoning plat.

1: low

2: mid-range

3: high

The following variables are the results of a survey given to these businesses. The survey overall had a moderate response rate of 37% out of thousands of businesses surveyed. What you see in the data set are the 200 responses with any values. Missing values were reset to 0 to improve the ease of use of the data set.

For bottom-up trees, you may need to reclassify continuous values into categorical. Use this as a guide:

biz_type

1: sole [proprietorship]

2: partnership

3: group [ownership]

[unknown as 0]

facility_sf

Facility square footage

1: 0-2500

2: 2501-5000

3: 5001-7500

4: 7501-10000

5: 10001+

[unknown as 0]

real_dataset2$sf_grp <- findInterval(real_dataset2$facility_sf, c(2501, 5001, 7501, 10001, 50000))

sales_type

Primary type of sales

1: online_wholesale

2: direct_wholesale

3: online_retail

4: direct_retail

5: mixed

[unknown as 0]

num_cust

Estimated number of customers

1-100

101-1000

1000-5000

5001+

[unknown as 0]

real_dataset2$cust_grp <- findInterval(real_dataset2$num_cust, c(101, 1001, 5001, 100000))

num_employ

Number of employees

1-50

51-100

101-500

[unknown as 0]

real_dataset2$employ_grp <- findInterval(real_dataset2$num_employ, c(51, 101, 501, 50000))

yrsinbiz

Number of years in business. [Also includes non-responses as 0]

real_dataset2$yrsinbiz_grp <- findInterval(real_dataset2$yrsinbiz, c(6, 11, 26, 51, 100))

past_expan

Number of major expansions the business has made, counted as events in its history.

[also includes non-responses as 0]

change_hands

Number of times the business has been sold or changed ownership in its history.

[Also includes non-responses as 0]

tot_success & tot_nsuccess

Success is any company that had at least 2 occurrences of more profit than the previous year and a rising market index, simultaneously. NSUCCESS is the opposite.