Labor Force Participation and Data Science Fundamentals

Vocabulary flashcards covering the Current Population Survey (CPS), data structures in R, the ATAC data value chain, reproducibility, and labor force calculations as presented in the BUSN 5000E lecture notes.

Current Population Survey (CPS)

The official measure of labor force participation in the US, conducted by the US Census Bureau for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) using a multistage probability-based sample.

Annual Social and Economic supplement (ASEC)

A CPS supplement included every March that provides additional information on work experience, income, noncash benefits, and migration for the preceding year.

Data

A generic term referring to any collection of discrete symbols that convey information; it is the plural form of datum.

Structured Data

Data organized in a table of records and fields, typically stored in data warehouses using a predefined data model.

Unstructured Data

Data such as text, image, and video files stored in their raw form in data lakes.

Data set

A singular collection of data that is restricted to a known and specific structure and type of content.

Unit of record

The type of entity to which the records in a data set correspond, such as a person.

Observation

The term used in this course for a data record, often indicated notationally with a subscript $i$.

Variable

The term used in this course for a data field, representing measurements of known types across observations.

Tidy data

A framework introduced by Hadley Wickham where each variable corresponds to a column, each observation to a row, and every entry to a single value.

Cross section

A data organization where many units are observed at a particular time and the order of observations does not matter.

Time series

A data organization where a single unit is observed over multiple time periods and the order of observations matters.

Panel data

A data organization where the same units are observed over multiple time periods and order matters within each unit.

Database

A collection of tables with known relationships managed with a database management system (DBMS) like MySQL.

Big Data (The Four Vs)

A concept defined by Volume (size), Velocity (speed of generation), Variety (complexity of forms), and Veracity (consistency and completeness).

Data Value Chain (ATAC)

The organizing framework for data analysis consisting of four stages: Acquire, Transform, Analyze, and Communicate.

filter

A dplyr verb that selects observations based on whether they satisfy certain conditions.

select

A dplyr verb used to keep or drop variables based on their names.

mutate

A dplyr verb used to create new variables as functions of existing variables.

Conditional Expectations Function (CEF)

The workhorse of data science, expressed as $E(\text{outcome}|\text{factors}) = E(y|xs)$, used for descriptive, causal, and predictive analyses.

Validity

A data quality aspect assessing whether a variable measures what it is supposed to measure.

Reliability

A data quality aspect assessing whether repeated measurements return the same value.

Reproducibility

The ability to generate the results of an original analysis using the same inputs, provided the inputs are readily available.

R Markdown

A notebook interface that facilitates literate programming by allowing users to "knit" code and text together into reports.

Data provenance

Documentation of how data were originally generated, where and when they were obtained, and what has happened to them since.

Data schema

A representation of data structure including table names, variable lists, data formats, units of record, and key variables.

Kilobyte (KB)

A storage unit measure equal to $1024$ ($2^{10}$) bytes.

Numeric (num)

An R data type for real numbers that allocates $8\text{ bytes}$ per number.

Integer (int)

An R data type for integer values that allocates $4\text{ bytes}$ per number.

Data Frame

The most important R data structure for storing data, combining the behavior of lists and matrices into a tabular structure.

Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR)

The ratio of the labor force to the population, calculated as $\text{LFPR} = \frac{LF}{Pop}$.

Labor Force (LF)

The sum of the number of employed ($E$) and unemployed ($U$) individuals: $LF = E + U$.