Data

 General: Information in raw or unorganized form (such as alphabets, numbers, or

symbols) that refer to, or represent, conditions, ideas, or objects. Data is limitless and
present everywhere in the universe. In fact, as Dr. Norbert Wiener (co-founder of the
science of cybernetics) once suggested, this world "... may be viewed as a myriad of
'To Whom It May Concern' messages." See also information and knowledge.
 Computers: Symbols or signals that are input, stored, and processed by a computer,
for output as usable information.
 Data is a collection of facts, such as values or measurements.It can be numbers,
words, measurements, observations or even just descriptions of things.

 Data can be qualitative or quantitative.

* Qualitative data is descriptive information (it describes something)

* Quantitative data, is numerical information (numbers).

Types of Data
Qualitative:

* He is brown and black

* He has long hair
* He has lots of energy

Quantitative:

* Discrete:
o He has 4 legs
o He has 2 brothers
* Continuous:
o He weighs 25.5 kg
o He is 565 mm tall

To help you remember think "Quantitative is about Quantity"

Collecting

Data can be collected in many ways. The simplest way is direct observation.

And Quantitative data can also be Discrete or Continuous:

* Discrete data can only take certain values (like whole numbers)
* Continuous data can take any value (within a range)

Example :

Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the
relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are
premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the
triplets." – Francis Crick – Scientist
Information
 Information is stimuli that has meaning in some context for its receiver. When
information is entered into and stored in a computer, it is generally referred to as
data. After processing (such as formatting and printing), output data can again be
perceived as information. When information is packaged or used for understanding or
doing something, it is known as knowledge.

 Information, as we know it today, includes both electronic and physical information.

The organizational structure must be capable of managing this information throughout
the information lifecycle regardless of source or format (data, paper documents,
electronic documents, audio, video, etc.) for delivery through multiple channels that
may include cell phones and web interfaces.

 Traditionally, in libraries, information was contained in books, periodicals,

newspapers, and other types of recorded media. It was accessible through a library's
catalog and with the assistance of indexes, in the case of periodical and newspaper
articles.

 Most of these previously time-consuming tasks have been sped up by computerized

"information systems." You still can find information stored in libraries, and it is very
well organized. You still can find information stored in periodicals, newspapers, and
other media, and these sources of information have their own systems of
organizatiion. The problem for most researchers is not that the information doesn't
exist in a library or in a journal or in a magazine or in a motion picture, but that they
have yet to discover the organizing principles that are designed to help them find the
information they need.
Knowledge

 Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as (i) expertise, and skills
acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical
understanding of a subject; (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts
and information; or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or
situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of
knowledge as "justified true belief."[citation needed] There is however no single agreed
definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain
numerous competing theories.

 Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning,

communication, association and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to
mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific
purpose if appropriate.

 Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary defines knowledge as "the fact or condition of

knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association." This
seems to be a good definition of knowledge as it is universally used and accepted.

 However, it begs the following question: what is meant by the term "knowing?" Once
again, let's turn to Webster's. The word "know" is defined as "to perceive directly:
have direct cognition of." And just for completeness sake, cognition is defined as
"the act or process of knowing including both awareness and judgment."
The Differences Between Data, Information and Knowledge
We frequently hear the words Data, Information and Knowledge used as if they are the
same thing.

You hear people talking about the Internet as a “vast network of human knowledge” or that
they’ll “e-mail through the data.”

By defining what we mean by data, information and knowledge – and how they interact
with one another – it should be much easier.

Knowledge
Firstly, let’s look at Knowledge. Knowledge is what we know. Think of this as the map of
the World we build inside our brains. Like a physical map, it helps us know where things are
– but it contains more than that. It also contains our beliefs and expectations. “If I do this, I
will probably get that.” Crucially, the brain links all these things together into a giant network
of ideas, memories, predictions, beliefs, etc.

It is from this “map” that we base our decisions, not the real world itself. Our brains
constantly update this map from the signals coming through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and
skin.

You can’t currently store knowledge in anything other than a brain, because a brain
connects it all together. Everything is inter-connected in the brain. Computers are not artificial
brains. They don’t understand what they are processing, and can’t make independent
decisions based upon what you tell them.

There are two sources that the brain uses to build this knowledge - information and data.
Data
Data is/are the facts of the World. For example, take yourself. You may be 5ft tall, have
brown hair and blue eyes. All of this is “data”. You have brown hair whether this is written
down somewhere or not.

In many ways, data can be thought of as a description of the World. We can perceive this
data with our senses, and then the brain can process this.

Human beings have used data as long as we’ve existed to form knowledge of the world.

Until we started using information, all we could use was data directly. If you wanted to know
how tall I was, you would have to come and look at me. Our knowledge was limited by our
direct experiences.

Information
Information allows us to expand our knowledge beyond the range of our senses. We can
capture data in information, then move it about so that other people can access it at
different times.

Here is a simple analogy for you.

If I take a picture of you, the photograph is information. But what you look like is data.

I can move the photo of you around, send it to other people via e-mail etc. However, I’m not
actually moving you around – or what you look like. I’m simply allowing other people who
can’t directly see you from where they are to know what you look like. If I lose or destroy the
photo, this doesn’t change how you look.
So, in the case of the lost tax records, the CDs were information. The information was lost,
but the data wasn’t. Mrs Jones still lives at 14 Whitewater road, and she was still born on
15th August 1971.

The Infogineering Model (below) explains how these interact.

Why does it matter that people mix them up?

When people confuse data with information, they can make critical mistakes. Data is always
correct (I can’t be 29 years old and 62 years old at the same time) but information can be
wrong (there could be two files on me, one saying I was born in 1981, and one saying I was
born in 1948).

Information captures data at a single point. The data changes over time. The mistake
people make is thinking that the information they are looking at is always an accurate
reflection of the data.

By understanding the differences between these, you can better understand how to make
better decisions based on the accurate facts.

Difference between Data, Information, Knowledge

To begin with, organizational data, information, knowledge, and wisdom, all that emerge from
the social process of an organization, and are not private. In defining them,we are not trying
to formulate definitions that will elucidate the nature of personal data, information,
knowledge, or wisdom. Instead, to use a word that used to be more popular in discourse than
it is at present, we are trying to specify inter subjective constructs and to provide metrics for
them.

A datum is the value of an observable, measurable or calculable attribute. Data is more than
one such attribute value. Is a datum (or is data) information? Yes, information is provided by
a datum, or by data, but only because data is always specified in some conceptual context.
At a minimum, the context must include the class to which the attribute belongs, the object
which is a member of that class, some ideas about object operations or behavior, and
relationships to other objects and classes.

Data alone and in the abstract therefore, does not provide information. Rather, information,
in general terms, is data plus conceptual commitments and interpretations. Information is
data extracted, filtered or formatted in some way (but keep in mind that data is always
extracted filtered, or formatted in some way).

Knowledge is a subset of information. But it is a subset that has been extracted, filtered, or
formatted in a very special way. More specifically, the information we call knowledge is
information that has been subjected to, and passed tests of validation. Common sense
knowledge is information that has been validated by common sense experience. Scientific
knowledge is information (hypotheses and theories) validated by the rules and tests applied
to it by some scientific community. Organizational knowledge in terms of this framework is
information validated by the rules and tests of the organization seeking knowledge. The
quality of its knowledge then, will be largely dependent on the tendency of its validation rules
and tests to produce knowledge that improves organizational performance (the
organization’s version of objective knowledge).
 Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom
by Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, Anthony Mills

There is probably no segment of activity in the world attracting as much attention at present
as that of knowledge management. Yet as I entered this arena of activity I quickly found
there didn't seem to be a wealth of sources that seemed to make sense in terms of defining
what knowledge actually was, and how was it differentiated from data, information, and
wisdom. What follows is the current level of understanding I have been able to piece together
regarding data, information, knowledge, and wisdom. I figured to understand one of them I
had to understand all of them.

According to Russell Ackoff, a systems theorist and professor of organizational change, the
content of the human mind can be classified into five categories:

1. Data: symbols

2. Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what",
"where", and "when" questions

3. Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions

4. Understanding: appreciation of "why"

5. Wisdom: evaluated understanding.

Ackoff indicates that the first four categories relate to the past; they deal with what has been
or what is known. Only the fifth category, wisdom, deals with the future because it
incorporates vision and design. With wisdom, people can create the future rather than just
grasp the present and past. But achieving wisdom isn't easy; people must move successively
through the other categories.

A further elaboration of Ackoff's definitions follows:

Data... data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in and of
itself). It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of itself. In computer
parlance, a spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data.

Information... information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational
connection. This "meaning" can be useful, but does not have to be. In computer parlance, a
relational database makes information from the data stored within it.

Knowledge... knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that it's intent is to
be useful. Knowledge is a deterministic process. When someone "memorizes" information
(as less-aspiring test-bound students often do), then they have amassed knowledge. This
knowledge has useful meaning to them, but it does not provide for, in and of itself, an
integration such as would infer further knowledge. For example, elementary school children
memorize, or amass knowledge of, the "times table". They can tell you that "2 x 2 = 4"
because they have amassed that knowledge (it being included in the times table). But when
asked what is "1267 x 300", they can not respond correctly because that entry is not in their
times table. To correctly answer such a question requires a true cognitive and analytical
ability that is only encompassed in the next level... understanding. In computer parlance,
most of the applications we use (modeling, simulation, etc.) exercise some type of stored
knowledge.

Understanding... understanding is an interpolative and probabilistic process. It is cognitive

and analytical. It is the process by which I can take knowledge and synthesize new
knowledge from the previously held knowledge. The difference between understanding and
knowledge is the difference between "learning" and "memorizing". People who have
understanding can undertake useful actions because they can synthesize new knowledge, or
in some cases, at least new information, from what is previously known (and understood).
That is, understanding can build upon currently held information, knowledge and
understanding itself. In computer parlance, AI systems possess understanding in the sense
that they are able to synthesize new knowledge from previously stored information and
knowledge.

Wisdom... wisdom is an extrapolative and non-deterministic, non-probabilistic process. It

calls upon all the previous levels of consciousness, and specifically upon special types of
human programming (moral, ethical codes, etc.). It beckons to give us understanding about
which there has previously been no understanding, and in doing so, goes far beyond
understanding itself. It is the essence of philosophical probing. Unlike the previous four
levels, it asks questions to which there is no (easily-achievable) answer, and in some cases,
to which there can be no humanly-known answer period. Wisdom is therefore, the process
by which we also discern, or judge, between right and wrong, good and bad. I personally
believe that computers do not have, and will never have the ability to posses wisdom.
Wisdom is a uniquely human state, or as I see it, wisdom requires one to have a soul, for it
resides as much in the heart as in the mind. And a soul is something machines will never
possess (or perhaps I should reword that to say, a soul is something that, in general, will
never possess a machine).

Personally I contend that the sequence is a bit less involved than described by Ackoff. The
following diagram represents the transitions from data, to information, to knowledge, and
finally to wisdom, and it is understanding that support the transition from each stage to the
next. Understanding is not a separate level of its own.

Data represents a fact or statement of event without relation to other things.

Ex: It is raining.

Information embodies the understanding of a relationship of some sort, possibly cause and
effect.
Ex: The temperature dropped 15 degrees and then it started raining.

Knowledge represents a pattern that connects and generally provides a high level of
predictability as to what is described or what will happen next.

Ex: If the humidity is very high and the temperature drops substantially the atmospheres is
often unlikely to be able to hold the moisture so it rains.

Wisdom embodies more of an understanding of fundamental principles embodied within the

knowledge that are essentially the basis for the knowledge being what it is. Wisdom is
essentially systemic.

Ex: It rains because it rains. And this encompasses an understanding of all the interactions
that happen between raining, evaporation, air currents, temperature gradients, changes, and
raining.

Yet, there is still a question regarding when is a pattern knowledge and when is it noise.
Consider the following:

 Abugt dbesbt regtc uatn s uitrzt.

 ubtxte pstye ysote anet sser extess
 ibxtedstes bet3 ibtes otesb tapbesct ehracts

It is quite likely this sequence represents 100% novelty, which means it's equivalent to noise.
There is no foundation for you to connect with the pattern, yet to me the statements are quite
meaningful as I understand the translation with reveals they are in fact Newton's 3 laws of
motion. Is something knowledge if you can't understand it?

Now consider the following:

 I have a box.
 The box is 3' wide, 3' deep, and 6' high.
 The box is very heavy.
 The box has a door on the front of it.
 When I open the box it has food in it.
 It is colder inside the box than it is outside.
 You usually find the box in the kitchen.
 There is a smaller compartment inside the box with ice in it.
 When you open the door the light comes on.
 When you move this box you usually find lots of dirt underneath it.
 Junk has a real habit of collecting on top of this box.
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data
http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/definition/information
http://www.unf.edu/~alderman/BLISS2/information.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data
http://www.mathsisfun.com/data/data.html
http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/data
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge
http://www.tdan.com/view-articles/5108/
http://www.hist-analytic.org/ETC1.pdf
http://www.infogineering.net/data-information-knowledge.htm
http://knowmgt.blogspot.com/2007/07/difference-between-data-information.html
http://www.infogineering.net/data-information-knowledge.htm