I’m trying to visit all the city parks in Great Falls, Montana in a single day, and I cannot figure a way to get Wolfram Alpha to calculate the shortest distance needed to visit all of them. Can anyone help me out with the code?
Dear Patrick,
I might be wrong, but I don’t think that WolframAlpha will know the city parks in Great Falls. In fact, I would recommend to register for a free account on the Wolfram Cloud where you can get access to the full Wolfram language. If you type in
CommonName@EntityProperties[Entity["City", {"GreatFalls", "Montana", "UnitedStates"}]]
you obtain a long list of known data about Great Falls:
{“administrative region”, “number of aggravated assaults”, “rate of
aggravated assault”, “aggregate home value”, “aggregate home value,
householder 15 to 24 years”, “aggregate home value, householder 25 to
34 years”, “aggregate home value, householder 35 to 64 years”,
“aggregate home value, householder 65 years and over”, “aggregate
household income”, “airport codes”, “fuel spent in delays”, “total
fuel spent in delays”, “average annual delay”, “total annual delay”,
“area”, “area code”, “arterial street traffic”, “arterial street
length”, “average public transit trip distance”, “number of
burglaries”, “rate of burglary”, “city sales tax”, “country”,
“county”, “county sales tax”, “total rate of crime”, “total number of
crimes”, “average daily traffic delay”, “elevation”, “number of
rapes”, “rate of rape”, “freeway traffic”, “freeway length”, “Gini
index”, “FHFA home price index”, “FHFA home price index annual
average”, “housing affordability index”, “households”, “number of
larcenies”, “rate of larceny”, “latitude”, “longitude”, “total
magnetic field strength”, “median age”, “median home sale price”,
“median home value”, “median household income”, “number of motor
vehicle thefts”, “rate of motor vehicle thefts”, “incidents of murder
and nonnegligent manslaughter”, “rate of murder and nonnegligent
manslaughter”, “name”, “next daylight saving shift”, “nicknames”,
“number of owner-occupied housing units”, “average daily peak
period travelers”, “peak period travelers per capita”, “average
daily peak period vehicles”, “notable people born in city”, “notable
people who died in city”, “per capita income”, “polygon”, “city
population”, “population by educational attainment”, “population by
migration in previous 12 months”, “population by language spoken at
home”, “population by marital status”, “population by poverty
status”, “population by school enrollment”, “population density”,
“coordinates”, “last daylight saving shift”, “total rate of property
crime”, “total number of property crimes”, “total public transit
use”, “unlinked public transit trips”, “4 bedroom apartment fair
market rent”, “1 bedroom apartment fair market rent”, “3 bedroom
apartment fair market rent”, “2 bedroom apartment fair market rent”,
“studio apartment fair market rent”, “number of robberies”, “rate of
robbery”, “daily rush hour length”, “state sales tax”, “time zone”,
“total daily traffic delay”, “total sales tax rate”, “average peak
travel time”, “unemployment rate”, “unweighted sample housing units”,
“unweighted sample population”, “total rate of violent crime”,
“total number of violent crimes”, “ZIP codes”}
This is quite a wealth of information, but I cannot find anything about the city parks. I don’t think that WolframAlpha will know them either. I will show you how to solve the problem in principle with the Wolfram Language for non-city parks in Montana. First we need the geo-coordinates of the parks in Montana.
coordinates = GeoPosition[#] & /@ (GeoEntities[Entity["AdministrativeDivision", {"Montana", "UnitedStates"}], "Park"]);
Then we can construct a graphic of the shortest tour:
GeoGraphics[{Red, Thick, Line@((coordinates[[Last[FindShortestTour[coordinates]]]]))}]
If you were to substitute the coordinates by coordinates for the city parks these functions should do the trick in the Wolfram Language.
I know that this does not solve your problem, because I do neither deal with city parks nor do I use WolframAlpha.
Best wishes,
M.
Using Marco’s approach in a bit different way:
montParks = GeoEntities[Entity["AdministrativeDivision", {"Montana", "UnitedStates"}], "Park"]
order = Last[FindShortestTour[GeoPosition /@ montParks]]
Out[] = {1, 4, 5, 6, 3, 2, 1}
ImageMultiply[
GeoListPlot[montParks, GeoZoomLevel -> 7,
GeoBackground -> "StreetMap", ImageSize -> 900],
GeoListPlot[montParks[[order]], PlotMarkers -> GeoMarker,
GeoBackground -> "ContourMap", Joined -> True, ImageSize -> 900]
] // Sharpen
Hi,
I have just had another idea which is certainly not doable with WolframAlpha alone. I found this website, which lists city parks in Great Falls. We can import the website
url = Import["http://www.greatfallsmt.net/recreation/city-parks", "Data"];
and then extract a list of all parks.
parks = url[[1, 2, 1, 1, 2]][[All, 1]]
This gives a rather long list:
{"Anaconda Hills Golf Course", "BelView", "Bloomingdale", "Boston
Heights", "Broadwater Bay", "Carter", "Charles Russell", "Chowen
Springs", "Clara", "Community Hall", "Dudley Anderson", "Eagle Falls
Golf Club", "Eagles Crossing", "Elks Riverside", "Fox Hollow",
"Garden Home", "Gibson", "Grande Vista", "Graybill", "Heren",
"Highland", "Horizon", "Hylande Heights", "Jaycee (Gallatin)",
"Kiwanis - North", "Kiwanis - West", "Kranz", "Lion's", "Madison",
"Margaret", "Meadowlark", "Memorial", "Mitchell Pool", "Montana",
"Morony", "Multi Sports Complex", "Noah's Ark", "Oddfellow",
"Overlook", "Pinski", "Rhodes", "Riverview", "Roosevelt",
"Sacajawea", "Sandhills", "Sight & Sound", "Skyline", "Skyline
Optimist", "Sunnyside", "Sunrise", "Tourist", "Valleyview", "Verde",
"Vereran's Memorial", "Wadsworth", "Warden", "West Bank", "West
Viaduct", "Westwood", "Whittier"}
In order to get the geo positions of these parks we use Google Maps. First we need to generate a query string; I’ll show it for the first park:
StringJoin["http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=", StringReplace[parks[[1]], " " -> "+"], "+Great+Falls", ",+Montana&sensor=false"]
This gives:
We then need to extract the coordinates from the website. This would have been easy had I used:
Import["http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=Anaconda+\Hills+Golf+Course,+Montana&sensor=false", "JSON"]
But when I first tried it I did not use the “JSON” option. I extracted the coordinates for all parks using:
coordsallparks =
DeleteDuplicates[
Quiet[GeoPosition[{ToExpression@
StringTake[
StringSplit[
StringSplit[StringSplit[#, "location"][[2]], "lat"][[2]],
","][[1]], -10],
ToExpression@
StringTake[
StringSplit[
StringSplit[StringSplit[#, "location"][[2]], "lat"][[2]],
","][[2]], -27 ;; -15]}] & /@ (Import[#] & /@ (StringJoin[
"http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=",
StringReplace[#, " " -> "+"], "+Great+Falls",
",+Montana&sensor=false"] & /@ parks))]]
instead. I then deleted the failed requests and one “outlier”.
parkpos = Select[coordsallparks, (NumberQ[#[[1, 1]]] && NumberQ[#[[1, 2]]] && #[[1, 1]] < 50) &]
This gives:
{GeoPosition[{47.4942, -111.283}], GeoPosition[{47.4731, -111.341}],
GeoPosition[{47.5158, -111.34}], GeoPosition[{47.5059, -111.249}],
GeoPosition[{47.4955, -111.309}], GeoPosition[{47.7854, -111.334}],
GeoPosition[{47.5102, -111.286}], GeoPosition[{47.4981, -111.279}],
GeoPosition[{47.4951, -111.231}], GeoPosition[{47.4963, -111.248}],
GeoPosition[{47.4763, -111.324}], GeoPosition[{47.4653, -111.235}],
GeoPosition[{47.4735, -111.333}], GeoPosition[{47.5101, -111.23}],
GeoPosition[{47.4611, -111.256}], GeoPosition[{47.5325, -111.314}],
GeoPosition[{47.4865, -111.303}], GeoPosition[{47.5113, -111.267}],
GeoPosition[{47.5097, -111.325}], GeoPosition[{47.5014, -111.279}],
GeoPosition[{47.4955, -111.259}], GeoPosition[{47.5494, -111.499}],
GeoPosition[{47.582, -111.063}], GeoPosition[{47.4926, -111.307}],
GeoPosition[{47.492, -111.306}], GeoPosition[{47.4987, -111.226}],
GeoPosition[{47.5073, -111.326}], GeoPosition[{47.5304, -111.307}],
GeoPosition[{47.5483, -111.505}], GeoPosition[{47.5333, -111.295}],
GeoPosition[{47.4889, -111.267}], GeoPosition[{47.5341, -111.301}],
GeoPosition[{47.5373, -111.302}], GeoPosition[{47.4904, -111.282}],
GeoPosition[{47.502, -111.222}], GeoPosition[{47.5216, -111.333}],
GeoPosition[{47.4918, -111.305}], GeoPosition[{47.5129, -111.312}],
GeoPosition[{47.5065, -111.341}], GeoPosition[{47.5088, -111.293}]}
If we assume that these are the coordinates of the parks, we can find the order of park visits for our tour:
order = Last[
FindShortestTour[
GeoPosition /@ (Select[
coordsallparks, (NumberQ[#[[1, 1]]] &&
NumberQ[#[[1, 2]]] && #[[1, 1]] < 50) &])]]
Last but not least we can plot that:
GeoGraphics[GeoPath[parkpos[[order]][[All, 1]]]]
Hope this helps,
Marco
PS: Looking at the graphic I don’t think that all of the parks qualify as city parks…
Hi again,
borrowing the main idea from Vitaliy’s far superior representation, the city park tour would look like this:
ImageMultiply[
GeoListPlot[Drop[parkpos, {6}], GeoZoomLevel -> 13,
GeoBackground -> "StreetMap", ImageSize -> 1500],
GeoListPlot[Drop[parkpos, {6}][[order2]],
GeoBackground -> GeoStyling["ContourMap", Contours -> 15],
PlotMarkers -> GeoMarker, Joined -> True,
ImageSize -> 1500]] // Sharpen
Cheers,
Marco
Dear Vitaliy,
I wonder whether it would be nice to use Tooltip to add photos of the markers that show the parks. I thought that one might use something like:
url = Import["http://www.greatfallsmt.net/recreation/city-parks",
"Data"];
parks = url[[1, 2, 1, 1, 2]][[All, 1]];
images = {}; For[i = 1, i <= Length[parks], i++,
result = Import[
StringJoin[
"https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/images?v=1.0&q=",
StringReplace[parks[[i]], " " -> "+"],
"+Montana+Great+Falls+Park+City"], "JSON"];
AppendTo[images,
Import["url" /. ("results" /. ("responseData" /. result))[[1]]]]]
to get the photos from google. This does not work quite yet, but one could download more than one image per search and then choose the best one.
Best wishes from Aberdeen,
Marco
Thank you!
One final question: for the parks on the outskirts of town should I just follow the roads? Swimming across the longest river in North America and running across an airport are not very practical. However, we will be on foot so some of the parks in town might be able to get to by cutting across some blocks/empty lots.
Thanks again for all the help.
Patrick
Curiously enough I have just seen this recent article published - also about Montana, Mathematica and the shortest path: