The guys at Dataquest did a lot of the work with some of the functions. Here we import them:
from helper import *
In the Wikipedia article List of helicopter prison escapes are available the data to use. With this couple of lines we get them and store them in a variable:
url = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes'
data = data_from_url(url)
Let's display some of the data:
for i in range(3):
print(data[i])
['August 19, 1971', 'Santa Martha Acatitla', 'Mexico', 'Yes', 'Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro', "Joel David Kaplan was a New York businessman who had been arrested for murder in 1962 in Mexico City and was incarcerated at the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City. Joel's sister, Judy Kaplan, arranged the means to help Kaplan escape, and on August 19, 1971, a helicopter landed in the prison yard. The guards mistakenly thought this was an official visit. In two minutes, Kaplan and his cellmate Carlos Antonio Contreras, a Venezuelan counterfeiter, were able to board the craft and were piloted away, before any shots were fired.[9] Both men were flown to Texas and then different planes flew Kaplan to California and Castro to Guatemala.[3] The Mexican government never initiated extradition proceedings against Kaplan.[9] The escape is told in a book, The 10-Second Jailbreak: The Helicopter Escape of Joel David Kaplan.[4] It also inspired the 1975 action movie Breakout, which starred Charles Bronson and Robert Duvall.[9]"] ['October 31, 1973', 'Mountjoy Jail', 'Ireland', 'Yes', "JB O'Hagan Seamus TwomeyKevin Mallon", 'On October 31, 1973 an IRA member hijacked a helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the exercise yard of Dublin\'s Mountjoy Jail\'s D Wing at 3:40\xa0p.m., October 31, 1973. Three members of the IRA were able to escape: JB O\'Hagan, Seamus Twomey and Kevin Mallon. Another prisoner who also was in the prison was quoted as saying, "One shamefaced screw apologised to the governor and said he thought it was the new Minister for Defence (Paddy Donegan) arriving. I told him it was our Minister of Defence leaving." The Mountjoy helicopter escape became Republican lore and was immortalized by "The Helicopter Song", which contains the lines "It\'s up like a bird and over the city. There\'s three men a\'missing I heard the warder say".[1]'] ['May 24, 1978', 'United States Penitentiary, Marion', 'United States', 'No', 'Garrett Brock TrapnellMartin Joseph McNallyJames Kenneth Johnson', "43-year-old Barbara Ann Oswald hijacked a Saint Louis-based charter helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the yard at USP Marion. While landing the aircraft, the pilot, Allen Barklage, who was a Vietnam War veteran, struggled with Oswald and managed to wrestle the gun away from her. Barklage then shot and killed Oswald, thwarting the escape.[10] A few months later Oswald's daughter hijacked TWA Flight 541 in an effort to free Trapnell."]
With a loop, the details of each event are removed:
index = 0
for row in data:
data[index] = row[:-1]
index += 1
print(data[:4])
[['August 19, 1971', 'Santa Martha Acatitla', 'Mexico', 'Yes', 'Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro'], ['October 31, 1973', 'Mountjoy Jail', 'Ireland', 'Yes', "JB O'Hagan Seamus TwomeyKevin Mallon"], ['May 24, 1978', 'United States Penitentiary, Marion', 'United States', 'No', 'Garrett Brock TrapnellMartin Joseph McNallyJames Kenneth Johnson'], ['February 27, 1981', 'Fleury-Mérogis, Essonne, Ile de France', 'France', 'Yes', 'Gérard DupréDaniel Beaumont']]
... and with another loop the complete date is replaced with just the year:
for row in data:
row[0] = fetch_year(row[0])
print(data[:3])
[[1971, 'Santa Martha Acatitla', 'Mexico', 'Yes', 'Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro'], [1973, 'Mountjoy Jail', 'Ireland', 'Yes', "JB O'Hagan Seamus TwomeyKevin Mallon"], [1978, 'United States Penitentiary, Marion', 'United States', 'No', 'Garrett Brock TrapnellMartin Joseph McNallyJames Kenneth Johnson']]
These two instructions allow us to know the earliest and latest year:
min_year = min(data, key=lambda x: x[0])[0]
max_year = max(data, key=lambda x: x[0])[0]
...and then a list of all the years between the two previous years is created:
years = []
for y in range(min_year, max_year + 1):
years.append(y)
print(years)
[1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020]
To each entry in this list an item (counter) is added in which the number of times that the corresponding year appears in the data is stored:
attemps_per_year = []
for year in years:
model_list = [year, 0]
attemps_per_year.append(model_list)
print(attemps_per_year)
[[1971, 0], [1972, 0], [1973, 0], [1974, 0], [1975, 0], [1976, 0], [1977, 0], [1978, 0], [1979, 0], [1980, 0], [1981, 0], [1982, 0], [1983, 0], [1984, 0], [1985, 0], [1986, 0], [1987, 0], [1988, 0], [1989, 0], [1990, 0], [1991, 0], [1992, 0], [1993, 0], [1994, 0], [1995, 0], [1996, 0], [1997, 0], [1998, 0], [1999, 0], [2000, 0], [2001, 0], [2002, 0], [2003, 0], [2004, 0], [2005, 0], [2006, 0], [2007, 0], [2008, 0], [2009, 0], [2010, 0], [2011, 0], [2012, 0], [2013, 0], [2014, 0], [2015, 0], [2016, 0], [2017, 0], [2018, 0], [2019, 0], [2020, 0]]
Each item in the list is now compared with the years of the data and, each time the years match, the counter is incremented by 1:
for pair in attemps_per_year:
year = pair[0]
for row in data:
if row[0] == year:
pair[1] += 1
print(attemps_per_year)
[[1971, 1], [1972, 0], [1973, 1], [1974, 0], [1975, 0], [1976, 0], [1977, 0], [1978, 1], [1979, 0], [1980, 0], [1981, 2], [1982, 0], [1983, 1], [1984, 0], [1985, 2], [1986, 3], [1987, 1], [1988, 1], [1989, 2], [1990, 1], [1991, 1], [1992, 2], [1993, 1], [1994, 0], [1995, 0], [1996, 1], [1997, 1], [1998, 0], [1999, 1], [2000, 2], [2001, 3], [2002, 2], [2003, 1], [2004, 0], [2005, 2], [2006, 1], [2007, 3], [2008, 0], [2009, 3], [2010, 1], [2011, 0], [2012, 1], [2013, 2], [2014, 1], [2015, 0], [2016, 1], [2017, 0], [2018, 1], [2019, 0], [2020, 1]]
Now that we have the information we need ready, we can plot it:
%matplotlib inline
barplot(attemps_per_year)
¿In which year did the most attempts at breaking out of prison with a helicopter occur?
As can be seen above, in each of the years 1986, 2000 and 2001 there were 3 escape attempts.
A couple of instructions can be used to count the events by country:
countries_frequency = df["Country"].value_counts()
print(countries_frequency)
France 15 United States 8 Belgium 4 Greece 4 Canada 4 Brazil 2 Australia 2 United Kingdom 2 Mexico 1 Chile 1 Russia 1 Puerto Rico 1 Italy 1 Netherlands 1 Ireland 1 Name: Country, dtype: int64
... and now the information is displayed:
In which country did the most attempts to escape from prison by helicopter take place?
By far, with 15 attempts, France is at the top of the list.
print_pretty_table(countries_frequency)
Country | Number of Occurrences |
---|---|
France | 15 |
United States | 8 |
Belgium | 4 |
Greece | 4 |
Canada | 4 |
Brazil | 2 |
Australia | 2 |
United Kingdom | 2 |
Mexico | 1 |
Chile | 1 |
Russia | 1 |
Puerto Rico | 1 |
Italy | 1 |
Netherlands | 1 |
Ireland | 1 |