France, its Food, and Data

Use Cases & Projects, Dataiku Product Eric Kramer

When I first moved to France I had so many questions about food. What is an "aperitif" and why am I expected to bring one to dinner? You did what to that goose? And wait, cheese can be a dessert?

I still have a ton of questions. But thankfully, the French government tracks food-related data through their census bureau. Let's try to get to the bottom to some of my questions with Dataiku DSS and data from France's census.

Data Prep

I downloaded the most detailed set of census data that I could find from here. It contains all sorts of weird information, like the number of open-air bowling alleys in each district. More importantly for us, this data also contains information on all of France's stores: bakeries, cheese shops, butchers, etc.

I also downloaded the contours of the districts. These let us know the geography of each district and let us visualize the data on a map.

I uploaded all the datasets into Dataiku DSS, synced them to my PostgreSQL database and did a big join.

Luckily, doing this in Dataiku DSS was as simple as a few clicks:

joining multiple datasets in Dataiku DSS

If you're looking for more information on this step, check out our how-to sections on databases and joins.

Making Interactive Maps with Dataiku DSS

Dataiku DSS lets you make interactive maps through a click-and-drag interface. I'm now going to open my dataset with all of the census data, and do some exploration just by clicking and dragging columns into the interface:

Making an interactive map of France with Dataiku DSS

The South (and Paris) love their "Epiceries"

Ah, the French épicerie: part green grocer, part corner shop, essential to the French mode de vie. Which parts of France have the most épiceries per capital? Let's plot the data from the French government to find out.

interactive map of French regions with the highest number of epiceries built with and visualized in Dataiku DSS

On the map, green shows regions with more "epiceries", while red shows regions with fewer. It definitely looks like the south and Paris appreciate their fresh vegtables.

The West Enjoy Their Fish

Oysters, shrimp and sole meunière ... France has its share of great seafood.

Fortunately, the French government tracks the number of fish shops or "poissonneries". It seems like the west and the south enjoys seafood more than the rest of the country.

interactive map of French regions with the highest concentration of fish shops built with and visualized in Dataiku DSS

Auvergne is Cow-Crazy

Cote du boeuf, filet mignon, and steak tartare. When I think French cuisine, I think beef. Which region has the most butchers? It's Auvergne!

interactive map of French regions with the highest number of butchers built with and visualized in Dataiku DSS

I'm told that this is somewhat of a stereotype. In fact, the Auverge tourism council proudly displays a herd of cattle in their promotional video.

I appreciate a region that appreciates its cows.

Paris and Perfume

It's not really food-related, but we can also look at number of perfume stores for each district. This map shows a sea of red with a tiny green speck -- Paris.

interactive map of French regions with the highest number of fragrance stores built with and visualized in Dataiku DSS

Paris does love its luxury goods, so I'm not too surprised there's such a drastic distinction between Paris and the rest of the country.

Recap

Dataiku DSS makes it easy to create interactive maps. Pretty quickly, we uploaded data from the French government, did a huge join and then started exploring the data with interactive maps.

You May Also Like

Alteryx to Dataiku: Working With Datasets

Read More

Demystifying Multimodal LLMs

Read More

I Have AWS, Why Do I Need Dataiku?

Read More

Why Data Quality Matters in the Age of Generative AI

Read More