PDF is a standardized document format that preserves the visual layout of text, graphics, and tables across systems. Although it may contain structured tables, it is not handled like ordinary tabular data because the information is embedded in a document format. section 5.0
Working with PDF data starts with a stakeholder question and an inspection of the available documents. The practical goal is to identify comparable tables, extract only relevant data, and create a minimum viable analysis before expanding the investigation. section 5.3
A pragmatic PDF-data workflow includes:
- Open documents directly and record the tables and recurring data themes they contain. section 5.3
- Choose comparable periods or sources before extracting data, especially when investigating trends over time. section 5.3
- Extract selected tables into CSV or another conventional format, then combine, sort, group, reshape, and visualize them. section 5.2.4
- Resolve inconsistent names or other differences across similar documents before comparing the resulting datasets. section 5.5.1
Film-industry trend analysis
Compare recurring tables from annual film-industry Yearbooks across pre-COVID and post-lockdown periods. Extract only the tables relevant to the emerging stakeholder question, then analyze and visualize the resulting data. section 5.2 section 5.3
