Today, I delved into the intricate realm of comprehending the dataset pertaining to fatal police shootings in the United States since 2015. The chronicle of my discoveries and subsequent actions is meticulously chronicled below:
- Data Loading:I accessed two CSV files, housing incident and agency data, directly from the repositories of the venerable Washington Post. This method ensures that I am equipped with the most current and pertinent information.
- Data Exploration: Upon scrutinizing the datasets, a salient revelation emerged—the agency ID serves as the common identifier across both tables. This fortuitous alignment allows for the seamless merging of the two tables, enabling a correlation between incident details and the agency or agencies responsible.
- Data Manipulation: However, upon closer inspection, a hurdle manifested itself—I encountered difficulties merging the tables due to disparate data types. To surmount this obstacle, I undertook the task of converting the data type of the agency ID in the incidents table to int64. Furthermore, the ‘agency ID’ column in the incident data table exhibited multiple values that necessitated separation. Rest assured, I am diligently addressing this matter and will provide updates in subsequent posts.