Barrie data projectWhat is missing from Barrie's park amenity file, and why that is the lesson
The City of Barrie publishes Park Amenity, a file of benches, planters, bins, goal posts and other items in its parks. Month 6 of the plan uses it. Every number below is our own count of the CSV downloaded on 22 October 2026.
Our count of blank values in the City of Barrie Park Amenity CSV (1,538 rows downloaded 22 October 2026). A value counts as blank when it is empty or holds only spaces| Column | Blank in rows | What a student should say about it |
|---|
| DATEINST | 1,520 | Install dates are almost never recorded, so no question about age can be answered |
| SUBTYPE | 1,188 | Most items have no subtype; the column describes planters and baskets |
| SEAT | 793 | Expected: bins, planters and posts have no seat |
| BASE | 351 | Mixed: some items have no base, some simply were not recorded |
| RECSOURCE | 340 | The record source is unknown for these rows |
| PARKID | 103 | These rows are not tied to a park: 75 are empty and 28 hold a single space |
Here is the program behind the table. It uses only the csv module and a dictionary, and its key move is value.strip() == "", which treats a single space as blank. Without the strip, PARKID would show 75 blanks instead of 103:import csv
blank = {}
placeholder_dates = 0
types = {}
with open("park-amenity.csv", encoding="utf-8-sig", newline="") as f:
rows = list(csv.DictReader(f))
for row in rows:
for column, value in row.items():
if value.strip() == "":
blank[column] = blank.get(column, 0) + 1
if row["DATEINST"].startswith("1899/12/30"):
placeholder_dates += 1
types[row["TYPE"]] = types.get(row["TYPE"], 0) + 1
print(len(rows), "rows in our download")
for column in ("DATEINST", "SUBTYPE", "SEAT", "BASE", "PARKID", "RECSOURCE"):
print(column, "blank in", blank.get(column, 0), "rows")
print("installed on 30 December 1899:", placeholder_dates)
print(sorted(types.items(), key=lambda t: -t[1])[:6])
Check the download first
The City's portal record lists 1,670 records for Park Amenity. Our CSV has 1,538. The live map service did not respond when we tried it, so a student's first written finding is that the export is not the whole layer.
A suspicious date
Eight rows give the install date as 30 December 1899. We treat it as a placeholder, not a real date, because it is day zero in several spreadsheet date systems; that is our reading, and students are taught to flag it rather than average it.
What is there
TYPE is always filled: 654 benches, 195 planters, 183 flower baskets, 116 large capacity garbage bins, 80 goal posts and 73 bleachers lead the list. Of the 654 benches, 573 have wooden seats.
Blank does not mean none
A blank DATEINST means the date was not recorded, not that the bench is new or old. A blank PARKID means the row is not linked to a park, not that the planter is nowhere. Students who write those two sentences correctly have understood missing data, which is most of real data work.
One more detail students enjoy: the file spells one of its TYPE labels RECYCLING RECEPTICAL, on 26 rows. A program grouping by type must use the label exactly as written, and a report should quote it as the file has it. The data is used under the Open Government Licence - Barrie. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence - Barrie (licence, City of Barrie open data). The City does not endorse this page or our classes.
