Editing DS4UX (Spring 2016)/Day 4 coding challenge

Each of the challenges this week will ask you to modify and work with code in the [[DS4UX_(Spring_2016)/Seattle_traffic|Seattle traffic project]] which you should have installed and begun working with in class.

This week, you will be required to attempt the first 4 challenges in this list, and upload your solution scripts via Canvas. You will NOT be graded on whether your solutions are correct, efficient, or even functional—just on whether you turn in an attempt at a solution that shows you tried. You WILL be marked down if you don't submit your solutions—so be sure to spend time attempting these challenges!

You do NOT need to complete and turn in your answers to the bonus challenges (#5 and #6). You will not be graded on these. But if you do attempt them, I'd love to see your solutions!

Being able to work through at least many of these challenges is a very good sign that you have mastered the concepts the important Python concepts we've covered so far. As always, it is fine to collaborate or work together on these problem sets, as long as you submit your solutions separately. And this week, please don't broadcast your responses via Canvas before Sunday night.

== Challenges (required) ==

:1. What day between January 1, 2014 and March 31, 2016 saw the most total traffic on the Burke-Gilman trail?  
:2. What was the busiest hour of ''any'' day for northbound bike traffic? How about southbound pedestrian traffic?
:3. How much southbound traffic does the Burke-Gilman get, on average, during Morning commute hours? How much does it get during evening commute hours?
::*''Note: for this question, assume morning commute hours start at 7am and end at 10am, and that evening commute hours start at 4pm and end at 7pm. You can also consider these to be hours to be "commute hours" even on weekends, since our data doesn't contain days of the week.''
:4. Write a program that generates a CSV file called <code>march_2016_daily_ped_counts.csv</code> of the daily north- and south-bound pedestrian counts for March 2016, in chronological order. Your file should contain column headers and it should be possible to open it in a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.


=== Bonus challenges (optional) === 
You don't need to complete these to get a "complete" grade for this assignment, but you should attempt them anyway!

:5. What day of the week does the Burke Gilman experience the most overall traffic, on average? The most pedestrian traffic? 
::*''Hint: it will help to know that January 1, 2014 was a Wednesday!''
:6. Which gets more inbound bike traffic per day, on average—the Burke-Gilman trail or the Mountain to Sound trail? 
::*By 'inbound' I mean ''towards'' central Seattle. For BGT, inbound means southbound, for MTS, inbound means westbound.
::*To answer this question, you will need to alter <code>bgt_traffic.py</code> so that it takes BOTH <code>bgt_bike_and_peds.csv</code> and <code>mts_bike_and_peds.csv</code> as input, and converts them into TWO separate dictionaries. <code>mts_bike_and_peds.csv</code> is also included in the <code>bgt-traffic.zip</code> file you downloaded for this week's challenges. 
::*The two files are in the same format, BUT there are a few differences that you need to account for (Hint: make sure to check the column titles and the order of the rows in each dataset!)

=== Solutions ===
<big>'''[http://jtmorgan.net/ds4ux/week4/bgt-traffic-solutions.zip Click here to download the solutions to this week's coding challenges]'''</big>

[[Category:DS4UX (Spring 2016)]]