New York FRC Teams and Major Cities

[BandChick]

Okay, so I was asked to put this together for work, but I'm so impressed with how it came out, I wanted to share it. Besides that, I think it's a really great way to show the impact of FIRST in a completely new way.

I spent the past four days making a graphical map analysis of NY by plotting all the FIRST Robotics (FRC) teams in the state versus the top 10 most-populated cities. It's interactive. And it's pretty cool. So check it out.

It functions just the way maps on Google do. Blue markers represent teams, red markers represent major cities. You can click on every marker and see the school and team number associated with them. Same for cities, the marker will tell you what city it represents (with approx. populations). I included a list of the high schools and cities in the upper right corner of the map too, for easy maneuverability.

http://www.nycnjfirst.org/ny_map.htm

For anyone who wants to make their own:
I used the website MultiPlotter to create the map. The instructions for putting the map on your own website are right on the homepage, and they're really easy to follow.

For addresses, I took the list of teams in the state (which you can find by going to the "What's going on in my area?" section of the FIRST website, and checked the long team name for each team. Most of them had high schools listed, or at least school districts. The ones that didn't I used their hometowns to narrow down my search.

The nice part of searching out the addresses is the Department of Education provides a list of all the high schools in the state (most states have their own DOE site where you can find this information). I used Google to find the NY State DOE website. Check under "Resources for Administration/Educators" if you can't find the listing easily.

For my map, I created an excel spreadsheet of teams with their high schools and towns. Then I searched the DOE spreadsheet for the high school, and copied the address to a separate text file. Plugged all the addresses into MultiPlotter, and Voila! New interactive multi-point map.

My only suggestion is double-check your addresses, plug them into Google Maps and make sure they come up. I had a few problems with this at first, but I narrowed it down pretty quickly. If MultiPlottr still has problems finding the address, try plugging in the Latitude and Longitude, which you can find for anywhere in the world by going to Maporama.

Feel free to leave comments/questions. And let me know if you have any suggestions for things I should add or edit to my own map!

[Mark McLeod]

What am I supposed to see?
I get a map centered on NY state, but see no markers.

PS I'll check my settings to see what might be affecting the addition of markers.

PPS: It was a security setting. I needed to allow binary and script behaviors for XP or add google maps as a trusted site.

[BandChick]

You SHOULD see 101 blue markers that represent all the FRC teams in NY,
and 10 red markers that represent the state's Top 10 Cities.

I checked it in my own IE browser window (I typically use Firefox), and it seemed to work fine for me. Works fine for me in Firefox too.
I'll see what I can find out about why it might not be displaying correctly for you.

[Andy Baker]

This is very cool. Thanks for sharing this, Sara.

Andy B.

[Nuttyman54]

That's spiffy. Is there any way to get the markers to display the team numbers? Or a way to re-order the list of teams by name instead of number (for people who're looking for a specific HS)?

[BandChick]

The list is ordered by the way it was entered in MultiPlotter. The only way to arrange it by name would have been to add locations in name order the first time. If you'd like, I can upload my Excel file and you can search for the high school there to find their team number.

When you click on a blue marker both the team number and name should pop up. Otherwise, there isn't anything else I can do.

[edit]I figured I'd just attach it, for anyone else that might want to search for a specific high school (and/or number).

[Rob2713g]

That looks really nice! Good job!

[Rich Wong]

AWESOME!


And so interactive. Every state could have one!

Thanks Sara!

[Jonathan Norris]

Wow thats really awesome, I am going to Queen's University in Kingston Ontario next year which is on the border to New York. There aren't any local teams in Kingston that I know of, but a couple that I can see are very close across the border (229 is a lot closer then I ever knew).

[KathieK]

Sara got me intrigued; I have been wanting to make up a map like this since last year. I have mapped the Connecticut FRC, FVC and FLL teams from last season at www.ctfirst.org/map.htm - some of the registration info for the teams was incorrect or incomplete so I have to try and get good info and include it in the address database.

The legend is arranged alphabetically by town, so if someone is looking to find out if there is a FIRST presence in their town they can do so. FRC teams = blue markers; FVC = red markers; FLL = yellow markers (I don't have info for any JFLL teams).

Per the author: be sure to include a \ before any single or double quotation marks. If you look at Avon's FRC team there is now a link to their website in the description. If you look at East Hartford's FVC team, there is a Contact person (points to me right now).

[DonRotolo]

Very cool. I'd have thought that Rochester was in the top 10, but I suppose the five boroughs of NYC have half the spots covered...
[EDIT]Oh, zooming in I see that the rochester peg was just covered by the many teams there.
How about a plot of teams versus the 10 largest non-governmental employers in NY State...??[/EDIT]

Don