1.1 Information Concepts

In this sub-section, we will discuss basic concepts behind the process of converting data into
information. it is data which will be converted to information by carrying out several
activities to make them useful in the decision making. However, very often the meaning of
these two terms causes confusion.

1.1 Data vs. Information

1.1.1 What is Data?

It is a set of facts which describes a particular thing in the real world. It may represent a single
value or multiple values. For example, marks of a particular subject of a student in a class
represent a single value data. At the same time, such a mark may exist with marks of other
students who took that subject. In order to add the value for these marks, it may be
necessary to access data of other facts such as students’ name, index number and year of
examination etc.

More examples of Data in different contexts:

• In a company: employee’s name, number of hours worked in a week, inventory part
numbers, sales orders
• In environment: Rainfall data, temperature data,

1.1.2 What is Information ?
Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish data and information. Information is a kind of data
which will be very useful for decision making in different contexts. Simply, it has more value
than data to understand a particular context.
For example, a teacher may want to know how many students have obtained marks above
50 in a particular subject. He/she may also want to know the student who obtained the
highest mark in the classroom. In such a situation, the teacher has to analyze data about
student marks together with their identification numbers.
More examples of Information in different contexts:
In a company: monthly salary of an individual in the salary slip, total sales in a particular
month of the company, etc.
In environment: Monthly report of rainfall, temperature analysis report of each part of the
country during a particular year.
In personal life: Total expenses in a particular month,

1.1.3 Process of converting from data to information

Data can be converted into information by carrying out some series of activities on data.
These activities involve some mathematical operations and/or tabulation operation. Process
describes this series of activities.

Information can be considered as an artifact in a particular context similar to other artifacts.
These artifacts are useful to carry out some other activities in. For example (E.g. A), furniture is
built using wood as raw material. The wood is produced using timber in trees. Interestingly,
timber cannot be directly used to produce furniture and it must be converted to
intermediate state called wood. This process requires specific knowledge which describes
rules, guidelines and procedures.






Knowledge for the Process:

According to example mentioned above (E.g. A), rules and procedures define
knowledge required for the process. Knowledge is the body of rules, guidelines and
procedures used to select, organize and manipulate data to make it suitable for a
specific task.
Before selecting some data to be processed, they could be examined to find out their
relevance or validity. Such examination is a prefix of the process. In order to improve the
value of information, the output of processed data will be organized with respect to
some relationship to improve its value.

1.1.4 Types of Data and Information:

Data and information can be categorized based on their representation for the human
processing. Following table summarizes the four main types of data together with examples.