Coordinate systems in R Programming - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Coordinate Systems

📖 Scenario: You are working with a simple map of a city park. The park has several landmarks, and you want to store their positions using coordinates.

🎯 Goal: Create a list of landmarks with their x and y coordinates, set a reference point, calculate the distance of each landmark from the reference point, and print the distances.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list called landmarks with named vectors for each landmark's x and y coordinates

Create a variable called reference_point as a named vector with x and y coordinates

Calculate the Euclidean distance from each landmark to the reference_point using a for loop and store results in a vector called distances

Print the distances vector

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Coordinate systems help us locate places on maps, in games, or in real life, like finding landmarks in a park.

💼 Career

Understanding coordinates and distance calculations is useful in fields like geography, game development, robotics, and data visualization.

1

Create landmarks with coordinates

Create a list called landmarks with these exact entries: Fountain = c(x = 3, y = 4), Bench = c(x = 7, y = 1), Playground = c(x = 2, y = 8)

R Programming

# Create the landmarks list with coordinates
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use list() to create a list and c(x = value, y = value) for coordinates.

2

Set the reference point coordinates

Create a variable called reference_point as a named vector with x = 0 and y = 0

R Programming

landmarks <- list(Fountain = c(x = 3, y = 4), Bench = c(x = 7, y = 1), Playground = c(x = 2, y = 8))
# Create the reference_point vector
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use c(x = 0, y = 0) to create the reference point vector.

3

Calculate distances from reference point

Create a numeric vector called distances and use a for loop with variable name to calculate the Euclidean distance from each landmark in landmarks to reference_point. Store each distance in distances with the same names as landmarks.

R Programming

landmarks <- list(Fountain = c(x = 3, y = 4), Bench = c(x = 7, y = 1), Playground = c(x = 2, y = 8))
reference_point <- c(x = 0, y = 0)
# Calculate distances using a for loop
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use sqrt(dx^2 + dy^2) to calculate distance and assign it to distances[name].

4

Print the distances

Write a print() statement to display the distances vector

R Programming

landmarks <- list(Fountain = c(x = 3, y = 4), Bench = c(x = 7, y = 1), Playground = c(x = 2, y = 8))
reference_point <- c(x = 0, y = 0)
distances <- numeric(length(landmarks))
names(distances) <- names(landmarks)
for (name in names(landmarks)) {
  dx <- landmarks[[name]]["x"] - reference_point["x"]
  dy <- landmarks[[name]]["y"] - reference_point["y"]
  distances[name] <- sqrt(dx^2 + dy^2)
}
# Print the distances vector
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(distances) to show the distances.