information and data
What is the difference between data and information? One way of drawing this distinction is as follows:
Data is just data e.g. £2 is data. It is by itself and is not connected with anything else.
You could then think of information as being data with “hooks on”. Information tells you something e.g. a beer costs £2. This may be useful or not depending on whether you want to buy a beer.
The interesting thing about bits of information is that you can connect them together with their hooks. So one bit of information might be “I want a beer” and another might be “a beer costs £2″. Join the two bits of information . If we could add another bit of information to this e.g. “I have £2 in my pocket” then we get yet another bit of information “I have enough money to buy a beer”.
The information that we have and the way we connect these bits of information allow us to do things. So some questions to think about are:
- What data do you have and how could you put some hooks onto it?
- What information do you have?:
- Could you break this information into smaller bits of information?
- How can you connect up your bits of information differently.
- Would it be possible to develop a theory of what data and information is and how information can be connected?