Algorithmic Methods for Data Mining - Homework 3

This is a Github repository created to submit the third Homework of the Algorithmic Methods for Data Mining (ADM) course for the MSc. in Data Science at the Sapienza University of Rome.

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What's inside this repository?

1. README.md: A markdown file that explains the content of the repository.

2. main.ipynb: A Jupyter Notebook file containing all the relevant exercises and reports belonging to the homework questions, the Command Line Question, and the Algorithmic Question.

3. modules/: A folder including 4 Python modules used to solve the exercises in main.ipynb. The files included are:

   • __init__.py: A init file that allows us to import the modules into our Jupyter Notebook.

   • web_scraper.py: A Python file including a WebScraper class designed to perform web scraping on the multiple pages of the MSc. Degrees website.

   • html_parser.py: A Python file including a HTMLParser class designed to parse the HTML files obtained by the web scraping process and extract relevant information.

   • data_preprocesser.py: A Python file including a DataPreprocesser class designed to pre-process text data in order to obtain information and build a Search Engine.

   • search_engine.py: A Python file including three classes: SearchEngine, TopKSearchEngine, and WeightedTopKSearchEngine designed to implement different versions of a Search Engine that queries information from our MSc. courses dataset.

   • map_plotter.py: A Python file including a MapPlotter class designed to plot a map including the results of our Search Engines.

4. CommandLine.sh: A bash script including the code to solve the Command Line Question.

5. .gitignore: A predetermined .gitignore file that tells Git which files or folders to ignore in a Python project.

6. LICENSE: A file containing an MIT permissive license.

Datasets

The data used to work in this repository was obtained by performing web-scraping in the MSc. Degrees website via the WebScraper class contained in the web_scraper.py module. If you want to reproduce the data perform the following steps:

1. Create the directories where you will save the obtained html and tsv files after you perform web-scraping. Specifically, run in your terminal the following commands:

mkdir data
mkdir data/htmls
mkdir data/tsvs

Make sure you create these folders in the same directory you've saved the main.ipynb file on.

2. Open the main.ipynb file and run the cells contained in the Data Collection section and you will obtain all the pertinent data files.

Alternatively, you can also just create a new .py file and run the following script:

from modules.web_scraper import WebScraper
from modules.html_parser import HTMLParser

#First, we have to initialize the WebScraper and HTMLParser classes by calling their constructors
web_scraper = WebScraper()
html_parser = HTMLParser()

#Here, the method saves scraped URLs from the website in a text file called urls.txt
web_scraper.scrape_urls()

#Here, we can call the .scrape_htmls() method to get the HTMLs of the URLs mentioned above.
web_scraper.scrape_htmls()

#Finally, you can parse the obtained HTMLs to obtain information about the courses and save it in .tsv files.
html_parser.parse_htmls()

#If you want to visualize the information obtained, you can store it in a dataframe
df = html_parser.get_dataframe()
df.head()

Take into account this script will take $\sim 11$ hours so run it only if necessary.

API Usage

In order to plot a map with our results using the MapPlotter class defined before we used two external API's:

• Google Maps API

• Mapbox API

In order to gain access to these API's we had to create accounts and obtain API keys from each API. These keys were stored in a .env file and then read directly into the map_plotter.py module. Because of privacy issues this file is not included in our repository but can be recreated by any user with their own API keys. To do this follow these steps:

1. Obtain API keys for both the Google Maps API and Mapbox API.

2. Create a .env file including the following:

   GOOGLE_API_KEY =
   MAPBOX_API_KEY =

   and write your API keys in the other side of the equal sign.

Plots

Since Plotly Express maps are not compiled well through NBViewer or Github, we recommend downloading the Notebook for a better visualization. If this isn't within your scope, we added a screenshot of the plot included in main.ipynb:

However, this plot is made to be interactive so it is still recommended to visualize it in your own computer.

Important Note

If the Notebook doesn't load through Github please try all of these steps:

1. Try compiling the Notebook through its NBViewer.

2. Try downloading the Notebook and opening it in your local computer.

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Author: Miguel Angel Sanchez Cortes

Email: sanchezcortes.2049495@studenti.uniroma1.it

MSc. in Data Science, Sapienza University of Rome