Final answer:
The question involves analyzing housing prices in relation to square footage, where housing prices have increased on average by 3.1% per year from 1990 to 2016. The median sales price offers a reliable measure to understand the actual market value by avoiding the effects of unusually high or low prices. Descriptive statistics can be derived from sample data to summarize and understand trends in housing prices.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question relates to the evaluation of housing prices and their relation to the square footage of homes. This is a common analysis in real estate and economics, which often involves statistical methods. In examining housing prices over time, data indicates that there has been a consistent rise in value. The median sales price for a single-family home was $122,900 in 1990 and $232,000 at the end of December 2016. Over these 24 years, according to the FRED® Economic Data, a steady increase of 3.1% per year was observed. This reflects an average financial return on housing investments during that period. It's also insightful to study the median prices as they provide a more accurate picture of the market than average prices, due to their resistance to extreme values. Factors such as local differences and market trends at various times contribute to fluctuations in housing prices, as depicted by the U.S. Census data.
A random sample of home square footage and corresponding asking prices can be used to demonstrate this relationship. When addressing the median and variation in the data, it is useful to compute descriptive statistics to summarize and understand the dataset. This can include measures such as the mean, median, mode, range, variance, and standard deviation. A uniform distribution of data is one possible pattern that can be observed when analyzing square footage among homes in a given area.