Zip codes

Extra fun with US zip codes

If you are 100% done with everything, you can have fun with the following exercise involving US zip codes. This is mostly for people with previous Unix experience.

You will find the following file:

/home/projects/22126_NGS/exercises/unix/ZIP_CODES.csv.gz

No need to copy it or unzip it. You can view it with zcat or zless.

csv stands for comma-separated values i.e. column1,column2,...

Some very useful commands:

1. cat or in our case zcat
2. head
3. tail
4. awk
5. sed
6. sort
7. uniq
8. wc
9. grep

For csv files, to get the first column, I recommend either:

zcat /home/projects/22126_NGS/exercises/unix/ZIP_CODES.csv.gz | cut -d , -f 1

zcat /home/projects/22126_NGS/exercises/unix/ZIP_CODES.csv.gz |  awk 'BEGIN{FS=","}{put code here}'

Q1: How many zip codes are in New York State ( STATE = NY)

Q2: Among the zip codes in New York State from Q1, what are the top 3 cities with the most ZIP codes assigned to them?

Q3: Among the zip codes in New York State from Q1, how many cities have a single ZIP code assigned to them?

Q4: Among the zip codes in New York State from Q1, count how many cities have 1 ZIP code assigned to them, how many have 2 ZIP codes, how many have 3 ZIP codes, .... etc

Q5: How many zip codes are below the famous Mason-Dixon Line (Latitude < 39.4)

Q6: For each different US state, list the city with the most zip codes assigned to it.

Q7: How many cities in the file begin with the letter 'M' ?

Please find the answers here

Congratulations you finished the exercise!