Turn research data into a barcode for inclusion in a thesis?

Question

I would like to include my research data in my thesis. I have investigated sweave but I just can't get it working properly. I then had the bright idea of including the data as a barcode and then printing that in the thesis. Perhaps using QR code. Has anyone done such a thing or have any ideas?

My data is in R and my thesis is written in LaTex. Most people now have mobile phones and it would seem an easy way of including datasets and allowing replication of analyses etc.

Answer 1

There are a number of free barcode generators (online and off), but they are limited to the number of actual bytes of data that you want to encode, so unless your data is quite small, I don't know if this would really be a good idea (unless you want to have pages and pages of barcodes to represent your actual data set).

Answer 2

Don't do that as it's a thesis, and tools for reading QR Codes probably won't stay around as long as your thesis will. Include the raw data in an appendix like everyone else.

Answer 3

I also think this is not quite a useful application of 2D barcodes:

1. The amount of data they can practically store (beyond 500 bytes is hard) is tiny in comparison to the size of research data sets
2. 2D barcodes enable easy transfer of information from physical world to mobile device. What's the compelling need to ingest the raw data into your phone?
3. A small data set should simply be printed. Most important thing is for humans to read it without resorting to magic decoder rings like a QR code scanner.
4. You should also post it online if you can in a simple and standard a format possible. Just include the URL in the paper; I don't see a real usefulness in QR coding the link. The target data is not for mobile-oriented consumption