Example 1

In this chapter's first example, we'll use data collected from a theoretical hospital where upon admission, information about a patient's medical history is collected through an online survey. Information is also added to a patient's file as treatment is provided.

The file includes many fields, including basic descriptive data for the patient, such as:

• sex

• DOBMonth, DOBDay, DOBYear

• height

• weight

• Bloodtype

Vital statistics, such as:

• blood_pressure

• heartrate

Medical history, such as:

• no_hospital_visits

• Surgeries

• Major illnesses or conditions

• Whether currently under a doctor's care

Demographical statistics, such as:

• Occupation

• Home state

• Educational background

Some additional information is also collected in the file in an attempt to develop patient characters and habits such as the number of times the patient included beef, pork, and fowl in their weekly diet, or whether they typically use a butter replacement product, and so on.

Periodically, the data is dumped to text files, are comma...