Data intended for human consumption, not machine consumption

Abstract

This chapter describes issues that can arise when a dataset has been provided in a format that is designed mainly for consumption by human eyeballs. Data is typically provided this way in order to allow a human to extract a particular message from the data. The problem is that we inevitably end up wanting to do more with the data, which means working with the data using software, which means explaining the format of the data to the software, which in turn means that we end up wishing that the data were formatted for consumption by a computer, not human eyeballs.