Information

information Definition

The structure of information:

Within our scope of interest there is an infinite amount of data to be gathered and therefore a decision has to be made as to which pieces of data are to be collected.

A piece of data is simply one or more symbols which represent something.

Some examples are shown below:

a) ‘128’

b) ‘Folio number 013458’

c) ‘At lunch they were 3 for 1’

d) ‘$14.35’

e) ‘Bu4NPh4B’

Data on its own is of little use to us. Most of you guys are wondering as to what does ‘128’ represents? What is a folio? Many would have realised that the third example is a cricket score. Example d) looks like a price (of what?) and example e) will mean little to anyone who is not a chemist or pharmacist.

There are an infinite amount of examples for this problem, which can be expressed as the problem that data is of no use until it is described or interpreted in some way or form. The data in the above examples are able to provide information only when the following descriptions and interrelationships are added.

a) 128 is the quantity in the warehouse of product number Q12

b) ‘Folio’ is the synonym for customer order.

c) The cricket team has scored 3 runs for one wicket (pitiful!)

d) The price of a taxi ride (Its expensive!)

e) The chemical formula for nitrobenzene

Still, much of this data will be uninteresting or irrelevant to many of you guys and may not provide any information at all!

information

The preceding examples suggest that a piece of data consists of three parts:

· The symbol

· The description of the data (often simply by its name)

· The context of the data

And information is only made when these pieces of data and their associated descriptions are related together in a manner relevant to the receiver of the information. W. Kent puts it succinctly ‘Relationships are the stuff of which information is made’.

It is not desirable to pursue the philosophical aspects of data in too much detail here, but from the above it can be seen that the context itself consists of data and descriptions. Indeed, the descriptions are data! Such data, (That is data about data), is often called ‘metadata’

When people talk about a piece of data (a ‘data item’, or ‘data element’) they generally mean that the context is known, assumed or understood. In most computer systems however, the context is not stored or stated explicitly, but it is the humans who interpret the data and provide the context. This can and does lead to significant problems both in the definition and interpretation of the data.

Effectively, it is the descriptions and context of data which allows it to have meaning. Symbols alone (e.g. ‘6:45’) cannot have any meaning, but described symbols (e.g. ‘depart Durban 6:45’) can have meaning. Sundgren refers to this as the semantic contexts of data. Langfors highlights this in discussing the use of words (which are of course, data). The symbol ‘Dog’, ‘Hund’, ‘Chien’ all have the same semantic contents. They mean the same thing. Although they have the same semantic contents (provided that you, the recipient, understand some rudimentary English, French and German), they are composed of different arrangements of symbols. However, he goes on to point out that these words do not have any information contents, ‘… the meaning of individual words do not, by themselves, convey information: this is obtained by suitable combinations of, and relations between, individual word meanings’. Similarly we have shown that individual pieces of data do not provide information, it is data described and related to other data which enables information to be produced.

Stamper

Stamper discusses information (and the related concepts of meaning) in terms of semiotics. This is the study of signs and dates back over a century. One of the categories of signs is ‘Symbols’. Symbols are signs which require convention to link them up with what they are representing.

Symbols and other signs have various characteristics. All signs have syntax which is concerned with structure and rules. The syntax of natural and formal language (for example mathematics, computer programming language) is an example. Signs have semantics which govern the relationship between what they are and what they signify. Thirdly, signs have pragmatics which is concerned with the use of signs by people, how convenient they are to use and, how people perceive them and so on.

A discussion of semiotics has a place in any consideration of information and information systems, but it is a little too wide ranging for the purposes of this post. Semiotics deals with all sorts of signs. Here, a more practical approach is required which commences with the aim of producing management information using computers, and so the most primitive aspect of the system which interests us is a piece of data. This is a higher level structure than a symbol since it typically consists of several symbols. However, the central tenet of semiotics, that considerations of signs (and hence of data) implies a consideration of the pragmatics, semantics and syntax, should be borne in mind at all times.

Although related data (often called a ‘Data message’) can have meaning (but does not have to), it is only when the message is received that information becomes available. Data conveys a message to the recipient of the data, but the meaning of that message depends on two factors: firstly, the recipient’s existing knowledge (the ‘Frame of mind’) and secondly his/her ability to interpret the data. The integration of data with existing knowledge may produce information (i.e. new knowledge). Alternatively, it may be meaningful data which does not result in information (i.e. the recipient already had this knowledge) or it could be meaning less data (i.e. it could not be integrated with previous knowledge). Finally it may produce a side effect such as reminding the recipient of existing knowledge (i.e. the data did not produce any new knowledge itself, but activated some process which enabled the recipient to recall previous knowledge)

The End

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