Hey all, this is what Al would like you to have done prior to getting down to work next Wednesday. Thanks!

gistfile1.md

Tire Quality App: How Safe Are Your Tires?

Before you get to SF:

1. Install Rails. Unless a critical mass of people are Pythonistas, we'll use Rails. Obviously JavaScript too, for front-end stuff, and any manner of data analysis tools, such as R.. but make sure Rails is installed and working on your machine before you show up. (Instructions below)
2. Download the UTQGS data: http://cl.ly/0L2c152y2n2j, and take a look at it
3. Develop some questions about the data that you'd want to see in an app. Example questions that come to mind: What are the safety ratings of the country's best-selling tires? How safe are the tires that come standard on the most common cars? Do tire costs correlate with safety?
4. Look at some news apps. I suggest: http://projects.propublica.org/emergency/. Come with some ideas on how to turn the UTQGS data into an app.

Install rails with this guide: http://blog.55minutes.com/2013/09/rails-os-x-install-guide/ , but make the following changes

1. SKIP this step:

   brew install apple-gcc42 autoconf pkg-config git postgresql qt

replace with

brew install git

2. To add stuff to your ~/.bash_profile, you can use any text editor (the guide doesn't tell you how). So, for example, if you use TextWrangler, you can type

   open ~/.bash_profile -a TextWrangler

to open the bash_profile in TextWrangler, save, close the file and open a new Terminal for the changes to take effect.

3. Skip everything in step 6 (Configure PostgreSQL). We'll be using SQLite instead.

4. At the very end, the "rails new myproject -d postgresql -T" command should just be "rails new myproject"

More info about the Uniform Tire Quality Grading System (UTQGS)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTQG http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Tires/Tires+Rating

Tire market profile:

http://www.tirereview.com/Content/Site309/ContentBlocks/919902012TireMa_00000056257.pdf