Data published by federal agencies is often unusable by computational researchers. For example, a computational epidemiologist cannot perform statistical analysis on the CDC Morbidity and Mortality report because it is only distributed as a PDF or as images. While it is important that humans can read the data, computers performing analysis on data can make important discoveries.Providing computer-friendly formats is not expensive. Most databases generate plain text files of the database with a simple command. Distributing data in plain text formats will help our researchers and scientists advance their field.
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