How to create a map?

Caravani
Caravani New Altair Community Member
edited November 2024 in Community Q&A
Hello Rapid-Miner Community!

I am a complete newbie to rapid miner and started learning to use the plattform in university for a business case. 

I have a big excel sheet with 2 columns - Colum A longitude - Column B latitude. Now I have to create a map of europe/germany and to create dots with the geographical position of each row. The aim is to see then, where the most dots are cause this gives me the information I need later :smile:

I already searched for solutions online, but if I understand it correctly this is not an easy task... 
Do you have any ideas?

Thanks in advance!

- Cara

Best Answer

  • Marco_Boeck
    Marco_Boeck New Altair Community Member
    edited August 2019 Answer ✓
    Hi,

    The data is expected to be in a numerical column each, so one numerical column for longitude, and another one for latitude. 53.344813 is a perfectly fine numerical value for lat/lon and you should see them appear if you choose a map that actually is in that range (you could try a worldmap first).
    If you have them in nominal columns, you can use a Parse Numbers operator to convert them before using the visualizations.

    Regards,
    Marco

Answers

  • BalazsBaranyRM
    BalazsBaranyRM New Altair Community Member
    Oh @Marco_Boeck, you're putting my blog out of work! ;-)
  • Caravani
    Caravani New Altair Community Member
    Hello,

    thanks a lot for your help so far! This is exactly what I need. 
    But I am currently struggling with the import of the coordinates. I don't know how to format my data so RapidMiner can read it. E.g. I have one column with the latitude where the data is written like "53.344813" and the other column with the longitude
    "7.166511". In one version I combined both to "53.344813°, 7.166511°" - but sadly it doesn't work with the visualization.

    So which format does the coordinates have to be?

    Thanks in advance!

  • Marco_Boeck
    Marco_Boeck New Altair Community Member
    edited August 2019 Answer ✓
    Hi,

    The data is expected to be in a numerical column each, so one numerical column for longitude, and another one for latitude. 53.344813 is a perfectly fine numerical value for lat/lon and you should see them appear if you choose a map that actually is in that range (you could try a worldmap first).
    If you have them in nominal columns, you can use a Parse Numbers operator to convert them before using the visualizations.

    Regards,
    Marco
  • Caravani
    Caravani New Altair Community Member
    Ah, it worked. Thanks a lot!