Data Formats Playground
Every other lab on this site assumes you can read a data file. This one teaches that, from zero — no code, no jargon. Start with one blood-pressure reading written four ways, then paste your own JSON, XML or CSV into a live inspector that names every mistake in plain English. Finish with seven repair drills and a graded quiz. Synthetic data only.
One blood-pressure reading, written four ways — plain English, CSV, JSON and XML. Same fact every time, so you can see that a format is only a way of writing something down. Tap any note to light up the matching piece of the file.
The one fact
On 19 July 2026 at 10:30 in the morning, nurse Meera recorded Karen Whitfield's blood pressure as 128 over 82, sitting, left arm.
Everything below says exactly this. Nothing is added and nothing is lost — only the way it is written down changes. That is all a “data format” is: an agreement about how to write something down so a machine can read it back without guessing.
Plain English
How a human writes it. Perfectly clear to you, useless to a computer.
Think of it as: A handwritten note on a ward whiteboard. Any nurse can read it; no software can count it.
On 19 July 2026 at 10:30 in the morning, nurse Meera recorded Karen Whitfield's blood pressure as 128 over 82, sitting, left arm.Tap a note to light up the matching piece above
Good at
- Anyone can read it with no training
- Carries nuance and hedging ('appeared comfortable')
Watch out for
- A computer cannot reliably pull '128' out of it as the systolic number
- Nothing stops two people writing the same fact two different ways
- You cannot add it up, chart it, or search it across 10,000 patients
Where you meet it in health: Clinical notes, discharge summaries, referral letters — still the majority of what a hospital records.