Description

In this project, we will perform this task from the perspective of Whataburger, which has 863 restaurants across southern USA according to their website. In this project, you will read in the IDs, addresses, latitude, and longitude of each Whataburger location from a file and save it in an “array-like” data structure (a vector, ArrayList, etc. is fine as well). You will need to implement the Rand-Select() algorithm we covered in class (as well as the Rand-Parition() algorithm that is uses). There is a separate file that contains the query points, one per line. A query consists of three numbers: latitude, longitude, and the number of stores we want to find.
So a general outline of how to handle the queries is as follows:
For each query:
• Compute the distance of the query point to each of the different Whataburger stores using the Haversine Formula. See here for my Java implementation of this formula: https://youtu.be/Camxl1fTzaw?t=290
• Use the order statistic query to find the farthest store from the query that we care about. For example, if we want to report 30 stores, you should search for the 30th closest store to the query point.
• Now that you know the 30th closest store to the query, you can then find all of the other stores that are at least this close to the query. Sort them in increasing distance from the query point and print them as I have shown here: https://youtu.be/Camxl1fTzaw?t=808
If you do not use an implementation of the randomized selection algorithm for this project, you will get a 0. It is not hard to get the correct answer with a basic algorithm. The entire point of this project is to use the algorithm from class that will obtain the answer very quickly.

How to code this project:
For the most part, you can code this project in any language you want provided that the language is supported on the Fox servers at UTSA. We want you to use a language that you are very comfortable with so that implementation issues do not prevent you from accomplishing the project. That said, we will be compiling and running your code on the Fox servers, so you need to pick a language that is already installed on those machines. See the PDFs on Blackboard in the Programming Projects folder for more information on how to connect to the Fox servers remotely (also covered in the Programming Project 1 overview lecture).

Since everyone is coding in their own preferred language, we are asking you to provide a bash script named project2.sh that will act similarly to a makefile. I covered how bash scripts work in class in the Project 1 overview lecture, and I recorded a short follow-up to this here:

In short, your bash script should contain the command to compile your code, and then on a different line, it should contain the line to execute your code. In this project, we will only be using the Whataburger data and the one query file, so these file names can be hard coded inside your program. No command line arguments are needed for this project. So, the command to execute your code should look like this:

bash project2.sh

Files provided in the project:

Since you are programming in different languages, we are providing no source files for your code. We have provided a blank project2.sh file for you to fill in as well as the WhataburgerData.csv and the Queries.csv files. The csv file extension stand for “comma separated values”. These files can be opened both by spreadsheets as well as by text editors. The idea is that each line of the file corresponds to a row in the spreadsheet, and the columns are separated by commas. This is a common format when one “column” of data could contains spaces, such as the addresses in this project. So you should not read the data in based off of white space. You should break it up according to commas. This is very easily done in Java using functions like split() (Python has a similar function). It is a little more complicated in C, but here is a nice website showing how it can be done: https://stdin.top/posts/csv-in-c/. We will be testing your code with a different query file, but it will have the same name so it can be hardcoded in your program.

Grading

Violations of the UTSA Student Code of Conduct will be penalized harshly. In particular, be very careful about sending code to a student who asks how you accomplished a particular task. I’ve heard this story several times recently: “They said they just wanted to see how to perform part X of the project. I didn’t think they would submit my exact code.” If this happens, you will both be penalized for cheating. To protect yourself and to more properly help your fellow student, send pseudocode, and not actual compilable code.

Submitting