next»

next article
dealing with variable options (varargin) in matlab
in programming on 17 February 2014

«previous

previous article
coding practices, part 1
in programming on 10 December 2013

random!

random article
Movie Review: The Revenant
in movies on 15 January 2016

 

r functions: city skylines

in programming on 28 December 2013

Summary

An artistic rendering of Boston's skyline using R. Code and source data are included.

article image
boston city skyline in polar coordinates

Been interested in using R (or other programming languages) to make artistic renderings of data—that is, representations that might not be as informative as well-made graphs, but are pleasing to look at purely for enjoyment. Took a stab at it earlier this year when representing usage statistics of a music group (club coat check member statistics) and for Cheyne-Stokes respiration. Wanted to make an artistic rendering of Boston's city skyline, again leaning on the use of polar coordinates as it is visually more interesting that using Cartesian. The code and csv file are included below.

boston building height csv files

download city_skylines_boston.R

R / S+
  1. # makes an artistic rendering of the boston city skyline
  2. # biafra ahanonu
  3. # updated: 2013.12.28
  4.  
  5. main <-function(inputFile,savePlot=1,saveFilename="city_skyline_boston.png",nrow=2,ncol=5,...){
  6.         # load in the data
  7.         dataFile = read.table(inputFile,sep=",",header=T);
  8.         # randomly group the buildings
  9.         dataFile$cat = round(runif(nrow(dataFile),1,nrow))
  10.         dataFile$scat = round(runif(nrow(dataFile),1,ncol))
  11.         # plot the data
  12.         cityPlot = ggplot(dataFile,aes(x=sample(c(nrow(dataFile))),y=stories,fill=building))+
  13.         scale_fill_hue()+
  14.         guides(fill=FALSE,group=FALSE)+
  15.         geom_bar(stat="identity",position="dodge")+
  16.         theme(
  17.                 axis.text.x = element_text(angle=90,hjust=1,vjust=.5,color="white"),
  18.                 panel.background=element_rect(fill="white",colour="white"),
  19.                 strip.text = element_blank(),
  20.                 strip.background = element_blank(),
  21.                 panel.grid = element_blank(),
  22.                 axis.text = element_blank(),
  23.                 axis.ticks = element_blank(),
  24.                 axis.title = element_blank()
  25.                 )+
  26.         facet_grid(cat~scat)+
  27.         coord_polar()
  28.  
  29.         # decide whether to save or display plot
  30.         if(savePlot==1){
  31.                 png(paste(saveFilename,sep=""),width=2400,height=2400,res=400,pointsize=1,antialias = "cleartype")
  32.                         print(cityPlot)
  33.                         # makeFootnote()
  34.                 dev.off()
  35.         }else{
  36.                 print(cityPlot)
  37.         }
  38. }
  39.  
  40. # run script
  41. main("buildings.height.boston.csv");

-biafra
bahanonu [at] alum.mit.edu

more articles to enjoy:

passing command-line parameters to imagej
11 october 2013 | programming
The processes of passing command-line parameters to ImageJ plugins isn't the most direct. Illustrated is a simple solution to this problem,[...] full code included.

satellite-based videos: eastern europe during the russia-ukraine conflict
30 november 2022 | satellite
To visualize the nighttime lights of Eastern Europe, with a focus on times before and after the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, I updated [...]my geoSatView R code originally built to view forest fires in the west coast of the United States to use satellite data from VNP46A1 and other datasets collected from the Suomi NPP VIIRS satellite.

I then created higher-quality movies in MATLAB by using the VNP46A2 Black Marble dataset collected by the same satellite, which has reduced cloud and other artifacts due to additional data processing. This allowed me to quantitate a permanent reduction in nighttime lights within Ukraine (in line with my initial hypothesis) and identify a multi-stage reduction of nighttime lights in Kiev's outer neighborhoods/metropolitan area that was greater than that seen in the city core/center. This highlights the utility of public satellite data to quickly test hypotheses and visualize large-scale changes.

I will go over how the Black Marble dataset is collected and processed along with how I created the movies and the advantages/disadvantages of each data source.

Using this platform and codebase, in follow-up posts I will look at 2021 Texas power crisis during the winter storms, vegetation changes in deforested areas or after conservation efforts, and other events.

why we need more james polks
25 september 2012 | politics
James J. Polk expanded the territory of the United States by about one-third during his tenure. A remarkable feat. Not only that, but i[...]t was done through an astonishing three ways: territorial conquest, gold and negotiation.

Some thoughts on why we should demand less rhetoric and more pragmatism/details from our presidents.

wary statistics #1: the tale of cdc mortality
06 april 2020 | statistics
I will briefly discuss properly interpreting data you might see in the mainstream or on social media. The takeaway: if recent data for some[...] measure (e.g. pneumonia deaths) from this year looks to be different than prior years, make sure to check that it is not an artifact of data collection or compilation.

©2006-2025 | Site created & coded by Biafra Ahanonu | Updated 21 October 2024
biafra ahanonu