Mini-pre-Thanksgiving project:

On Thanksgiving Day 2015 (2015-11-26) there should be almost no taxi pickups where the parade route takes place: http://www.marching.com/news/2015/2015-macys-parade-lineup/2015_macys_parade_route_map.jpg

1. Use awk to extract the taxi cab data from Nov 26, 2015. Use three delimiters for the data: comma, space, and colon [That way, you can easily determine the hour in which a taxi cab ride starts.] It suffices to extract the taxi cab rides that started between 9 AM and 12 noon, i.e., those rides in which the hour of departure is 9, 10, or 11.

2. Save this data into a comma-separated file.

3. Import the data about the longitudes and latitudes to R.

4. Make a map of New York City at a zoom level of 14 that shows the entire parade route. (Use the data that you extracted.) Are you able to see that taxi cab rides were unable to pickup passengers along the parade route?

4 remix:  Extract the data from a region of New York City that you believe would enable you to see the entire parade route.