Enclosing Circle Algorithm (Plotting)

McNair Project

Enclosing Circle Algorithm (Plotting)
Project Information
Project Title	Enclosing Circle Algorithm (Plotting)
Start Date
Deadline
Keywords	Tool
Primary Billing
Notes
Has project status	Subsume
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Step By Step Use

1. The file "vc_circles.py" contains the main script, "master_circles", which takes in the following

  a. "textfile", which is the filepath of the text data to read in. It must have fields "latitude',"longitude","city","datefirstinv"
  b. "n", which is the number of points to include in each circle
  c. "iterations", the number of iterations to try and find a local optimum. Large numbers will slow the runtime.
  d. "basefn", the base file path of where to store the circles and points for each city, year pair 

       an example: "C:\\Users\\Name\\Documents" 

       the function will add on the city,year to this base file name and save it to this file directory 

       "C:\\Users\\Name\\Documents\\CityYear.txt"
  e. "outputfn", the full file path of where to output the area of the circles for a given city,year 

2. To plot the circles,points for a given year onto google maps, use the function "googleplotter.py"

  a. This function takes in the filename used in 1d 

     an example: "C:\\Users\\Name\\Documents\\CityYearAreas.txt"

3. To plot just the circles do the following:

  a. go to command prompt and type in cd /d E:\McNair\Software\CodeBase\New Implement of Enclosing Circle (Constrained K Means, Smallest Circle)
  b. type in python plot_wrapper2.py
  c. follow the prompts
  d. file should pop up in the same directory
  *the data must have column headers 'latitude' and 'longitude'*