# Spatial and Temporal Viz of Gas Price, in France

A great think in France, is that we can play with a great database with gas price, in all gas stations, almost eveyday. The file is rather big, so let’s make sure we have enough memory to run our codes,

> rm(list=ls())

To extract the data, first, we should extract the xml file, and then convert it in a more common R object (say a list)

> year=2014
> loc=paste("http://donnees.roulez-eco.fr/opendata/annee/",year,sep="")

Content type 'application/zip' length 15248088 bytes (14.5 MB)

> unzip("oil.zip", exdir="./")
> fichier=paste("PrixCarburants_annuel_",year,
".xml",sep="")
> library(plyr)
> library(XML)
> library(lubridate)
> l=xmlToList(fichier)

We have a large dataset, with prices, for various types of gaz, for almost any gas station in France, almost every day, in 2014. It is a 1.4Gb list, with 11,064 elements (each of them being a gas station)

> length(l)
[1] 11064

There are two ways to look at the data. A first idea is to consider a gas station, and to extract the time series.

> time_series=function(no,type_gas="Gazole"){
+   prix=list()
+   date=list()
+   nom=list()
+   j=0
+   for(i in 1:length(l[[no]])){
+     v=names(l[[no]])
+     if(!is.null(v[i])){
+       if(v[i]=="prix"){
+         j=j+1
+  date[[j]]=as.character(l[[no]][[i]]["maj"])
+  prix[[j]]=as.character(l[[no]][[i]]["valeur"])
+  nom[[j]]=as.character(l[[no]][[i]]["nom"])
+       }}
+   }
+   id=which(unlist(nom)==type_gas)
+   n=length(id)
+   jour=function(j) as.Date(substr(date[[id[j]]],1,10),"%Y-%m-%d")
+   jour_heure=function(j) as.POSIXct(substr(date[[id[j]]],1,19), format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", tz = "UTC")
+   ext_y=function(j) substr(date[[id[j]]],1,4)
+   ext_m=function(j) substr(date[[id[j]]],6,7)
+   ext_d=function(j) substr(date[[id[j]]],9,10)
+   ext_h=function(j) substr(date[[id[j]]],12,13)
+   ext_mn=function(j) substr(date[[id[j]]],15,16)
+   prix_essence=function(i) as.numeric(prix[[id[i]]])/1000
+   base1=data.frame(indice=no,
+            id=l[[no]]$.attrs["id"], + adresse=l[[no]]$adresse,
+            ville=l[[no]]$ville, + lat=as.numeric(l[[no]]$.attrs["latitude"])
/100000,
+  lon=as.numeric(l[[no]]$.attrs["longitude"]) /100000, + cp=l[[no]]$.attrs["cp"],
+       saufjour=l[[no]]$ouverture["saufjour"], + Y=unlist(lapply(1:n,ext_y)), + M=unlist(lapply(1:n,ext_m)), + D=unlist(lapply(1:n,ext_d)), + H=unlist(lapply(1:n,ext_h)), + MN=unlist(lapply(1:n,ext_mn)), + prix=unlist(lapply(1:n,prix_essence))) + + base1=base1[!is.na(base1$prix),]
+
+   date_d=paste(year,"-01-01 12:00:00",sep="")
+   date_f=paste(year,"-12-31 12:00:00",sep="")
+   vecteur_date=seq(as.POSIXct(date_d, format =
+                 "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),
+                    as.POSIXct(date_f, format =
+                 "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"),by="days")
+   date=paste(base1$Y,"-",base1$M,"-",base1$D, + " ",base1$H,":",base1$MN,":00",sep="") + date_base=as.POSIXct(date, format = + "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S", tz = "UTC") + idx=function(t) sum(vecteur_date[t]>=date_base) + vect_idx=Vectorize(idx)(1:length(vecteur_date)) + P=c(NA,base1$prix)
+   base2=ts(P[1+vect_idx],
+         start=year,frequency=365)
+   list(base=base1,
+        ts=base2)
+ }

To get the time series, extrapolation is necessary, since we have here observation at irregular dates. Here, for instance, for the second gas station, we get

> plot(time_series(2)$ts,ylim=c(1,1.6),col="red") > lines(time_series(2,"SP98")$ts,col="blue")

An alternative is to study gas price from a spatial perspective. Given a date, we want the price in all stations. As previously, we keep the last price observed, in each station,

> spatial=function(dt){
+   base=NULL
+   for(no in 1:length(l)){
+     prix=list()
+     date=list()
+     j=0
+     for(i in 1:length(l[[no]])){
+     v=names(l[[no]])
+     if(!is.null(v[i])){
+       if(v[i]=="prix"){
+   j=j+1
+   date[[j]]=as.character(l[[no]][[i]]["maj"])
+       }}
+   }
+   n=j
+   D=as.Date(substr(unlist(date),1,10),"%Y-%m-%d")
+   k=which(D==D[which.max(D[D<=dt])])
+ if(length(k)>0){
+   B=Vectorize(function(i) l[[no]][[k[i]]])(1:length(k))
+ if("nom" %in%  rownames(B)){
+   k=which(B["nom",]=="Gazole")
+   prix=as.numeric(B["valeur",k])/1000
+   if(length(prix)==0) prix=NA
+   base1=data.frame(indice=no,
+   lat=as.numeric(l[[no]]$.attrs["latitude"]) /100000, + lon=as.numeric(l[[no]]$.attrs["longitude"])
/100000,
+   gaz=prix)
+   base=rbind(base,base1)
+ }}}
+ return(base)}

For instance, for the 5th of May, 2014, we get the following dataset

> B=spatial(as.Date("2014-05-05"))


To visualize prices, consider only mainland France (excluding islands in the Pacific, or close to the Caribeans)

> idx=which((B$lon>(-10))&(B$lon<20)&
+ (B$lat>35)&(B$lat<55))
> B=B[idx,]
> Q=quantile(B$gaz,seq(0,1,by=.01),na.rm=TRUE) > Q[1]=0 > x=as.numeric(cut(B$gaz,breaks=unique(Q)))
> CL=c(rgb(0,0,1,seq(1,0,by=-.025)),
+ rgb(1,0,0,seq(0,1,by=.025)))
> plot(B$lon,B$lat,pch=19,col=CL[x])

Red dots are the most expensive gas stations, that particular day.

If we add contours of the French regions, we get

> library(maps)
> map("france")
> points(B$lon,B$lat,pch=19,col=CL[x])

We can also focus on some specific region, say the South of Brittany.

> library(OpenStreetMap)
> map <- openmap(c(lat= 48,   lon= -3),
+                c(lat= 47,   lon= -2))
> map <- openproj(map)
> plot(map)
> points(B$lon,B$lat,pch=19,col=CL[x])


As we can see on that map, there are regions that are rather empty, where the closest gas station might be a bit far away. Actually, it is possible to add Voronoi sets on the map,

> dB=data.frame(lon=B$lon,lat=B$lat)
> idx=which(!duplicated(dB))
> dB=dB[idx,]

which could help to get the price of the closest gaz station.

> library(tripack)
> V <- voronoi.mosaic(dB$lon[id],dB$lat[id])
> plot(V,add=TRUE)

It is possible to plot each polygon with the color of the gaz station we add. Actually, it is a bit tricky, and I could not find a R function to to this. So I did it manually,

> plot(map)
> P <- voronoi.polygons(V)
> library(sp)
> point_in_i=function(i,point) point.in.polygon(point[1],point[2],P[[i]][,1],P[[i]][,2])
> which_point=function(i) which(Vectorize(function(j) point_in_i(i,c(dB$lon[id[j]],dB$lat[id[j]])))(1:length(id))>0)
> for(i in 1:length(P)) polygon(P[[i]],col=CL[x[id[which_point(i)]]],border=NA)

With this map, we can see that we have blue areas, i.e. all stations in a given area are cheap (because of competition), but in some places, a very expensive one is next to a very cheap one. I guess we should look closer at the dynamics… [to be continued….]

# k-means clustering and Voronoi sets

In the context of $k$-means, we want to partition the space of our observations into $k$ classes. each observation belongs to the cluster with the nearest mean. Here “nearest” is in the sense of some norm, usually the $\ell_2$ (Euclidean) norm.

Consider the case where we have 2 classes. The means being respectively the 2 black dots. If we partition based on the nearest mean, with the $\ell_2$ (Euclidean) norm we get the graph on the left, and with the $\ell_1$ (Manhattan) norm, the one on the right,

Points in the red region are closer to the mean in the upper part, while points in the blue region are closer to the mean in the lower part. Here, we will always use the standard $\ell_2$ (Euclidean) norm. Note that the graph above is related to Voronoi diagrams (or Voronoy, from Вороний in Ukrainian, or Вороно́й in Russian) with 2 points, the 2 means.