What’s the difference between data and information?

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32

According to this definition of Datum:

Data is a set of information (quantitative, qualitative, categorical or indefinite) can be organized or not.

Wikipedia.

Following this line I can assume that data(s) and information are the same things. However, in college my teacher said that datum is not information when it is not treated or when it has no meaning.

For example, this is a given 29 and M it is also a given, however, I do not know what these data represent, as they could be considered information. And it is at this point that I have arisen my doubt that comes right down.

Doubt

I’d like to know the difference between datum and information and what makes it data(s) become information?

terminology

  • Your question would not be information x knowledge?

  • @GOKUSSJ4 not only information and data, I even thought about it, because I think knowledge is broader, and I want to focus on the context of Computing ;).

  • Ah good understood.

  • I think your question is nice, but it seems a little broad. For example, you included the tag [tag:data structure] in it, and in that context (programming a data structure) it may be that what your teacher said makes sense. But in another scope this is not necessarily true. I will not vote to close, however, because I may be mistaken and there is a canonical answer.

  • @Luizvieira I put the tag data structure because it’s the part where the most manipulates the data in its raw form, it could be database but I think that wouldn’t make much sense. The purpose of the question is to bring an answer that clarifies the difference between data and information since all Information Technology, Computing and Software Development is based on Data and Information and any other Information System is part of this concept.

  • 1

    Precisely. In each of these areas you cited the distinction between data and information may not be the same. I just quoted the tag as an example where I think what your teacher said might make sense. But this is not the case in Information Theory, for example.

  • @Luizvieira I think that the theory of information addresses this question :), but I found it interesting to force in two question difference between information and data, and as a given becomes information, the answer to these two questions would be so wide?

  • 1

    If the question is to understand examples like these from 29 and of M, I think the answer of rray is enough. Is that it? It seems to be, considering that you assume that datum is prior to information. But as @Luizvieira said, this is one of the possible definitions, within a restricted field. It is difficult to have a universal definition. The wikipedia citation itself doesn’t help much, it seems to be derived from the English entry - which does not cite any primary source, only a half-plus-or-minus secondary. All this to say that I liked the question, but I don’t know how far to answer :)

  • 1

    I don’t think Information Theory addresses this. I really don’t remember having this distinction, it was all "information". But if you find a source that says otherwise, maybe it’s material for a response from your own. :)

  • @Denercarvalho That article (in english) and that link Wikipedia might help clarify a little.

  • 1

    @zekk I’ll take a look thanks

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4 answers

22

Datum is something crude, like the 29 or the M of your question. They alone make no sense, it is not possible to draw any conclusion of what they are, what they serve for or what context they belong to.

Information: is the given most context or interpretation. That is, it has a defined meaning and serves to demonstrate something. For example, the M may be the representation of the male sex, the 29 age or maybe a day of the month. See how the data needs a context and interpretation to turn an information.

  • The second paragraph got a little fuzzy.

  • @diegofm would be the beginning? Informação: é o dado mais contexto?

  • Yes. Although I can understand reading the rest, this beginning was a bit confusing.

  • 2

    First of all, I don’t disagree with what you said. But do you have any reliable sources? I ask because this is not necessarily an absolute truth. I may be wrong, but from what I remember, in the Information Theory this distinction is not so sure. A full screen of noise (channel not tuned on TV), for example, has the most amount of information, though there is no understandable pattern there.

  • 1

    @Luizvieira no, the least bad place I found was in wikipedia, then I’ll give an edited answer, with a information new :D

  • I slapped the "information" of the question :D

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19


Datum

I believe that the concept of data has a relatively precise definition, being used with the same interpretation in several areas. In computing there are for example the terms data structure, database and data mining, in telecommunications data transmission, data package, mobile data, while statistics has the concept of statistical data and several other areas also use this term.

All of these areas use this term with the definition you presented on Wikipedia. It is clear that there are small differences, as an example in some telecommunication books the term given is used as synonymous with digital information, countering data transmission and voice transmission, where the voice is not considered to be given because it is an analogue signal, I mean, the data would have to be digital. But apart from these subtleties the concept of data is the same in most cases.

Information

The term information, on the other hand, certainly does not have a precise definition. Shannon himself, considered the father of information theory, wrote the following when trying to define information:

The word "information" has been Given Different meanings by Various Writers in the general field of information Theory. It is likely that at least a number of These will prove sufficiently Useful in Certain Applications to Deserve further Study and Permanent recognition. It is Hardly to be expected that a single Concept of information would satisfactorily Account for the numerous possible Applications of this general field.

Translation:

For the word "information" was given different meanings by various writers in the general field of information theory. It is likely that at least a number of these approaches will be sufficiently useful in certain applications for permanent recognition. It is hardly to be expected that a single concept of information would satisfactorily explain its numerous possible applications.

As an example of this difference of meanings, a large number of scholars argue that thought is particular to the human being and a computer cannot think. There are also several researchers who argue that a computer can have the same form of intelligence as a human being. In certain contexts information is treated as particular to the human being, that is, if in the future it is discovered that a computer really cannot think, or really can think it would change the concept of information. A final definition of information would depend on issues that we do not yet know the answer to, and therefore is still a developing term.

Definition of information

For the context of this question a very useful definition was described by an Italian philosopher named Luciano Floridi which consists of the so-called general definition of information:

The General Definition of Information (GDI): Σ is an instance of information, understood as semantic content, if and only if:

  1. Σ consists of one or more data;
  2. the data in Σ are well-Formed;
  3. the well-Formed data in Σ are Meaningful.

Translation

The general definition of information (GDI): Σ is an instance of information, understood as semantic content, if and only if:

  1. Σ consists of one or more data;
  2. the data in Σ are well formed;
  3. the well-formed data in Σ have meaning.

In this definition it is already very clear the difference between data and information and it fits with the understanding of your teacher. Information does not exist without one or more data, but not all data is information. What makes the data become information is the processing and the meaning.

But meaning is an abstract concept and not yet understood in its entirety. If in a given context only a human being can give meaning to a given, then information exists only in the head of a human being. And this can vary from person to person, if a person does not understand binary numbers, a set of these numbers has no meaning to him, if someone else understands, for him it has meaning.

This is a broader definition, which is used in several areas and probably what your teacher was referring to.

Usefulness

But then again, if you have a program that uses data, your data is there and it does what it has to do, what’s the difference whether it is information or not? This definition of what information has to have meaning does not have much use for computing, as it is very subjective.

But Shannon’s definition is extremely useful. In it the information can be measured, so there is the amount of information. The data is measured in bytes and the information too! So a file can have 8KB of data and 1KB of information. If this file is compressed it can stand for example with 4KB of data and the same 1KB of information. How I can unzip the file and get back to the original 8KB no information has been lost!

In this case the information does not depend on having meaning or an observer.

  • 2

    Although I have "positively" all the answers =). Yours I found more complete, because it enters the field of philosophy, which in my opinion, is the best way to try to explain something (as you yourself mentioned) very abstract.

7

Reinforcing what they have already answered,

We have here the letter To. This letter is a given. There is no clear context about what it represents so it is just a given.

Now we have the lyrics To within a context of musical notes.

inserir a descrição da imagem aqui

Represents the note La.

In this context, it becomes an information.

On a guitar/guitar, represents the fifth loose string inserir a descrição da imagem aqui

Can also be read as in the diagram below, representing the pressing on strings 2, 3 and 4 on the second fret.

inserir a descrição da imagem aqui

Some may find this out of scope, but there is a goal here, which is to clarify the focus of the issue.

Here in these examples of the musical note we have a datum representing information different.

Can we complicate it? Yes, of course!

Now let’s complicate things further. Still using the example of the letter A, we can also say that A is information.

There you think, but thatmer@you’re talking?

See, it depends on the context.

For a computer, the letter A is information composed by the data 01000001. Because that’s how every machine sees things, in binary format.

In that context, 01000001 is the data and A is the information.

Language differences and interpretations

Note that discussions like this about the meaning of data and information also depend on the language.

In Portuguese we usually misuse words, employing them in places that should not be used.

Example:

Portuguese language (both make sense)
I got the news report
I got the news report.

Japanese language
(it doesn’t make sense to use it that way)
ニ ュ ー ス デ ー タ を お 届 け

(that makes sense)
ニ ュ ー ス 情 報 を お 届 け

デ ー タ: data
情 報: information

Here, data represents something abstract, without a meaning. Information represents something concrete. Something that has a set of data that make up the information.

In Portuguese we mix things up a lot and end up creating double meaning, causing confusion like this.

In short

The meaning about what is a datum and what is a information depends on the context and also the language.

Information is a set of data, of knowledge, a product, is communication.

Data is something abstract and in contemporary Portuguese can be interpreted as information within specific contexts as mentioned in the above examples.

  • 1

    For me, there is no information, even in the context of musical notes. When the letter A represents the note there is an encoding and not information. A sequence of notes forming a melody is information. The phrase "The note there is the fifth string of the guitar" contains information, the information brings you something new, in this case an association between there and the fifth string. I may be wrong, but I think the note there is a letter of a musical alphabet and so it does not differ from the letter A, the same happens with its chord shape or the binary form, all of these are data and not information.

  • 1

    As I mentioned several times, it all depends on the context and there is the factor of the use of the terms in each language, in this case Portuguese, also commented in the answer. If you take it out of context it gets weird and leads to an interpretation like the one you described. There’s a context there in all this. No wonder I wrote so much to elucidate. I avoided going into this topic too much because it would get out of the focus and scope of the site. For a better understanding we need to study music.

  • 1

    To make it clear, about what he commented on the musical note, it is not wrong what he commented as long as it has a specific context. But notice well what I wanted to put, especially in the third image with the notes of, re, mi, sol, la. Within that tablature, they represent information because, within that context, a musician sees the meaning, there is information, it is concrete. Finally, perhaps it was too complicated an example to elucidate, but it was the most convenient that I could create at the time of answering precisely thinking about the ambiguity and differences of interpretation according to the context.

  • Okay, interpreting this way makes sense. What I meant was that context is information! That’s why there’s so-called contextual information. The there alone is not information, but the set there + context is information greater than the context alone. From the text I had understood that there alone is information if interpreted in a context, but there is no way to separate a particle of information, that would be a given. When you said that the letter A is information composed by the data 01000001 my interpretation made a lot of sense, but really has another way of seeing

6

Dice

"Data" comes from a singular Latin word, given, that originally meant "something given." Its early use dates back to 1600. Along the time "data" became the plural of datum

Data is raw, disorganized facts that need to be processed. The data can be something simple and seemingly random and useless until it is organized. The data are perceived through the senses and, once integrated, end up generating the information necessary to produce the knowledge.

Example:Test results of each student in a class are given.

Information

"Information" is an ancient word dating back to 1300 and has origins from Former French and Middle English. You always referred to the "act of informing", generally with regard to education, instruction or other knowledge communication.

Information is an organized set of data, which constitutes a message about a given phenomenon or event. Information allows solving problems and making decisions, taking into account that its rational use is the basis of knowledge. When data is processed, organized, structured or presented in a particular context to make it useful, which is called information.

Example:The average score of a class or the entire school is the information that can be derived from the data presented.

Read on here.

  • 3

    @GOKUSSJ4 Really acquaintance is something more complete. I believe that knowledge is related to experience; life practice, which involves a whole set of information, and by itself, many dice. Then comes another very cool thing that also has a relationship, which is the wisdom.

  • 4

    Goku, knowledge is information. or also set of information... summarizing quite roughly, information is absorbed data and knowledge is absorbed information. That is why I found the negative unjust here and I voted in favour of what he described in a very clear and concise way, which is in line with what is described in dictionaries and encyclopedias of the Portuguese language

  • @Danielomine, I know that, only the author specified in the cometarium ( because I think knowledge is broader, and I want to focus on the context of Computing)

  • 3

    +1 .. In my view @Cleidimarviana talked about information x data. The fact of having cited "knowledge" only served to aggregate with information that the other answers did not have.

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