Outline for plotting earthquakes

plot_earthquakes.py

from datetime import date

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt


def get_data():
    """Retrieve the data we will be working with."""
    ...


def get_year(earthquake):
    """Extract the year in which an earthquake happened."""
    timestamp = earthquake['properties']['time']
    # The time is given in a strange-looking but commonly-used format.
    # To understand it, we can look at the documentation of the source data:
    # https://earthquake.usgs.gov/data/comcat/index.php#time
    # Fortunately, Python provides a way of interpreting this timestamp:
    # (Question for discussion: Why do we divide by 1000?)
    year = date.fromtimestamp(timestamp/1000).year
    return year


def get_magnitude(earthquake):
    """Retrive the magnitude of an earthquake item."""
    ...


# This is function you may want to create to break down the computations,
# although it is not necessary. You may also change it to something different.
def get_magnitudes_per_year(earthquakes):
    """Retrieve the magnitudes of all the earthquakes in a given year.
    
    Returns a dictionary with years as keys, and lists of magnitudes as values.
    """
    ...


def plot_average_magnitude_per_year(earthquakes):
    ...


def plot_number_per_year(earthquakes):
    ...



# Get the data we will work with
quakes = get_data()['features']

# Plot the results - this is not perfect since the x axis is shown as real
# numbers rather than integers, which is what we would prefer!
plot_number_per_year(quakes)
plt.clf()  # This clears the figure, so that we don't overlay the two plots
plot_average_magnitude_per_year(quakes)