In this project, we aim to:
We begin by importing some helper functions
from helper import *
Now, let's get the data from the List of helicopter prison escapes Wikipedia article.
url = 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes'
data = data_from_url(url)
Let's print the first three rows
for row in data[:3]:
print(row)
['August 19, 1971', 'Santa Martha Acatitla', 'Mexico', 'Yes', 'Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro', "Joel David Kaplan was a New York businessman who had been arrested for murder in 1962 in Mexico City and was incarcerated at the Santa Martha Acatitla prison in the Iztapalapa borough of Mexico City. Joel's sister, Judy Kaplan, arranged the means to help Kaplan escape, and on August 19, 1971, a helicopter landed in the prison yard. The guards mistakenly thought this was an official visit. In two minutes, Kaplan and his cellmate Carlos Antonio Contreras, a Venezuelan counterfeiter, were able to board the craft and were piloted away, before any shots were fired.[9] Both men were flown to Texas and then different planes flew Kaplan to California and Castro to Guatemala.[3] The Mexican government never initiated extradition proceedings against Kaplan.[9] The escape is told in a book, The 10-Second Jailbreak: The Helicopter Escape of Joel David Kaplan.[4] It also inspired the 1975 action movie Breakout, which starred Charles Bronson and Robert Duvall.[9]"] ['October 31, 1973', 'Mountjoy Jail', 'Ireland', 'Yes', "JB O'Hagan Seamus TwomeyKevin Mallon", 'On October 31, 1973 an IRA member hijacked a helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the exercise yard of Dublin\'s Mountjoy Jail\'s D Wing at 3:40\xa0p.m., October 31, 1973. Three members of the IRA were able to escape: JB O\'Hagan, Seamus Twomey and Kevin Mallon. Another prisoner who also was in the prison was quoted as saying, "One shamefaced screw apologised to the governor and said he thought it was the new Minister for Defence (Paddy Donegan) arriving. I told him it was our Minister of Defence leaving." The Mountjoy helicopter escape became Republican lore and was immortalized by "The Helicopter Song", which contains the lines "It\'s up like a bird and over the city. There\'s three men a\'missing I heard the warder say".[1]'] ['May 24, 1978', 'United States Penitentiary, Marion', 'United States', 'No', 'Garrett Brock TrapnellMartin Joseph McNallyJames Kenneth Johnson', "43-year-old Barbara Ann Oswald hijacked a Saint Louis-based charter helicopter and forced the pilot to land in the yard at USP Marion. While landing the aircraft, the pilot, Allen Barklage, who was a Vietnam War veteran, struggled with Oswald and managed to wrestle the gun away from her. Barklage then shot and killed Oswald, thwarting the escape.[10] A few months later Oswald's daughter hijacked TWA Flight 541 in an effort to free Trapnell."]
From the above we can see the data screen is mostly covered by the last element, the 'Details' column. Let's remove that.
index = 0
for row in data:
data[index] = row[:-1]
index += 1
print(data[:3])
[['August 19, 1971', 'Santa Martha Acatitla', 'Mexico', 'Yes', 'Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro'], ['October 31, 1973', 'Mountjoy Jail', 'Ireland', 'Yes', "JB O'Hagan Seamus TwomeyKevin Mallon"], ['May 24, 1978', 'United States Penitentiary, Marion', 'United States', 'No', 'Garrett Brock TrapnellMartin Joseph McNallyJames Kenneth Johnson']]
Now the 'Details' column is removed, it is much better to look at the data. Next we will modify the date column to only include the year.
for row in data:
row[0] = fetch_year(row[0])
print(data[:3])
[[1971, 'Santa Martha Acatitla', 'Mexico', 'Yes', 'Joel David Kaplan Carlos Antonio Contreras Castro'], [1973, 'Mountjoy Jail', 'Ireland', 'Yes', "JB O'Hagan Seamus TwomeyKevin Mallon"], [1978, 'United States Penitentiary, Marion', 'United States', 'No', 'Garrett Brock TrapnellMartin Joseph McNallyJames Kenneth Johnson']]
Our next goal is to create a list of lists where the list has two elements:
# Determine min and max year in data
min_year = min(data, key=lambda x: x[0])[0]
max_year = max(data, key=lambda x: x[0])[0]
# Create list containing all years between (and including) min and max year
years = []
for y in range(min_year, max_year + 1):
years.append(y)
print(years)
[1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020]
# Create list of list for each year
attempts_per_year = []
for year in years:
attempts_per_year.append([year,0])
print(attempts_per_year)
[[1971, 0], [1972, 0], [1973, 0], [1974, 0], [1975, 0], [1976, 0], [1977, 0], [1978, 0], [1979, 0], [1980, 0], [1981, 0], [1982, 0], [1983, 0], [1984, 0], [1985, 0], [1986, 0], [1987, 0], [1988, 0], [1989, 0], [1990, 0], [1991, 0], [1992, 0], [1993, 0], [1994, 0], [1995, 0], [1996, 0], [1997, 0], [1998, 0], [1999, 0], [2000, 0], [2001, 0], [2002, 0], [2003, 0], [2004, 0], [2005, 0], [2006, 0], [2007, 0], [2008, 0], [2009, 0], [2010, 0], [2011, 0], [2012, 0], [2013, 0], [2014, 0], [2015, 0], [2016, 0], [2017, 0], [2018, 0], [2019, 0], [2020, 0]]
We now have a list of lists. Next we determine how many attempted were made in each year, and answer the following:
"In which year did the most attempts at breaking out of prison with a helicopter occur?"
# Determine how many attempts made in each year
for row in data:
for ya in attempts_per_year:
y = ya[0]
if row[0] == y:
ya[1] += 1
print(attempts_per_year)
[[1971, 1], [1972, 0], [1973, 1], [1974, 0], [1975, 0], [1976, 0], [1977, 0], [1978, 1], [1979, 0], [1980, 0], [1981, 2], [1982, 0], [1983, 1], [1984, 0], [1985, 2], [1986, 3], [1987, 1], [1988, 1], [1989, 2], [1990, 1], [1991, 1], [1992, 2], [1993, 1], [1994, 0], [1995, 0], [1996, 1], [1997, 1], [1998, 0], [1999, 1], [2000, 2], [2001, 3], [2002, 2], [2003, 1], [2004, 0], [2005, 2], [2006, 1], [2007, 3], [2008, 0], [2009, 3], [2010, 1], [2011, 0], [2012, 1], [2013, 2], [2014, 1], [2015, 0], [2016, 1], [2017, 0], [2018, 1], [2019, 0], [2020, 1]]
%matplotlib inline
barplot(attempts_per_year)
The most attempts at breaking out of prison with a helicopter occur in the years 1986, 2001, 207, 2009.
Next up, we will answer the following:
"In which countries do the most attempted helicopter prison escapes occur?"
# Determine escape attempts by country.
countries_frequency = df["Country"].value_counts()
# Displaying the attempts by country using the helper function.
print_pretty_table(countries_frequency)
Country | Number of Occurrences |
---|---|
France | 15 |
United States | 8 |
Belgium | 4 |
Canada | 4 |
Greece | 4 |
Brazil | 2 |
Australia | 2 |
United Kingdom | 2 |
Ireland | 1 |
Russia | 1 |
Puerto Rico | 1 |
Chile | 1 |
Netherlands | 1 |
Italy | 1 |
Mexico | 1 |
In this project, we managed to import historical attempts of prison break using a helicopter from the web. We extracted the data into the required formate and analysed the data, and found most attempts at breaking out of prison with a helicopter occur in the years 1986, 2001, 207, 2009. We also found the most attempts made was in France, with a total of 15 times between the years 1971 and 2020.
To futher explore this project, the following could be a starting point: