bigfoot-sightings

Data Preparation

Data on reported Bigfoot sightings was downloaded in a .csv and .json format. There are 5,082 records total, though data entered varies. The oldest recorded date is 1869 and data runs through 2/28/23. The bfro_reports_geocoded.csv file contains the most information about individual sightings, including:

• a report title with a brief, one-sentence summary - 4,104 records
• date of the sighting (if available) - 4,104 records
• the season the sighting took place in - 5,082 records
• latitude and longitude (if available) - 4,104 records
• the state the sighting took place in - 5,082 records
• the county the sighting took place in (if available) - 5,082 records
• weather at the time of the sighting (if available) - 4,102 records
• a detailed description of the event, as entered by the viewer/submitter - 5,043 records

MongoDB was used to turn this .csv into a .json format that could then be uploaded to an API through Flask.

How to Access Data

Download this repository. In Terminal/Command Prompt, activate a PythonData shell and run http:server. Open the app.py file through Python. A web address will appear in a Terminal/Command Prompt window. Navigate to that address. The JSON data is stored at http://127.0.0.1:5000/api/v1.0/sightings. Leave this window open while navigating the two webpages in the repository.

Bigfoot Sighting Map

The webpage bigfoot-map.html is a Leaflet map of Bigfoot sighting location reports in the United States of America. It uses a clustered marker visualization as the individual sightings con be located in quite dense clusters. Each individual marker also includes a popup when hovered over, providing information about the date of the sighting and a brief summary of the encounter.

Additionally, the Leaflet Sidebar (v2) plugin is utilized in charting more information about each report in the sidebar. This can be accessed by clicking on the marker popups, as is described by the hover-on ‘Click for more info’. Relevant reported data includes the County, Date, Season, and the full, detailed report in paragraph format.

Bigfoot Sighting Dashboard

The webpage dashboard.html is an interactive dashboard that shows the number of Bigfoot sightings in each county of each state. There is also a static graph of the number of Bigfoot sightings each season.

Data and Code Sources

The dataset explored is the Bigfoot sightings as reported to the <a href=https://www.bfro.net/>Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization</a> (BFRO). The dataset was found on data.world, uploaded by Timothy Renner.

Unix DateTime JavaScript conversion function convertTimestamp based on <a href=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24170933/convert-unix-timestamp-to-date-time-javascript>StackOverflow answer by Kamal Shooryabi 7/21/2018 and modified by Ivan 6/21/2018</a>.

Code in /static/js/dashboad.js to get a dictionary of the count of each county is from the <a href=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19395257/how-to-count-duplicate-value-in-an-array-in-javascript>StackOverflow answer by isnot2bad 10/1/2015</a>.

Code in /static/js/dashboad.js to get an array of counties matched with an array of their counts is based on <a href=https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10654992/how-can-i-get-a-collection-of-keys-in-a-javascript-dictionary>StackOverflow answer by alex 5/18/2012</a>.