27 July 2019 — 0516 mdt

Follow-up, Washington Post pill database

Data for Montana. After posting my report on the Washington Post’s distribution of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s ARCOS database, I learned that a subscription to the Post is required for access to the data. Because the data are in the public domain — we, the people, own the data — I’m making available a customized subset of the data for Montana. It’s an 8.4 megabyte zipped file.

I added four fields. I split the transaction date field into year, month, and day of the month, fields, and added a serial number field that can be used an a unique identifier.

Notched boxplots. Not all low cost applications can produce this chart. I constructed mine using Citron 2, a discontinued application for the Macintosh. Owners of Excel can buy add-ons to construct the plot. Those willing to put up with a steep learning curve can use R, an open-source environment for statistical computing and graphics (R website).