Difference Between Data And Information
Data vs Information
The difference Between Data And Information is that data are symbols that describe facts, conditions, values, or situations. Data can be a letter, a number, a spelling sign, or any symbol that represents a quantity, a measure, a word, or a description. In general, information is an organized set of data, which constitutes a message about a certain entity or phenomenon.
Key Differences Between Data And Information
- Data is a single unit that contains raw facts and figures. In contrast, information is the collection of useful data, capable of providing knowledge or information about a particular way.
- Information comes from data and therefore data does not rely on the information.
- Data is used as input, which needs to be processed and organized in a particular way to generate an output, i.e. information.
- The data can not describe anything or we can say that there is no relationship between different pieces of data but the information is always specific and there is a correlation in it.
- Data has no real meaning while information has some meaning.
Comparison between data and information
| Data | Information | |
| Definition (Oxford Dictionaries) | Facts and statistics gathered for reference or analysis | Facts provided or learned about something or someone
Data processed, stored or transmitted by a computer |
| Refers to | Raw data | Data analyzed |
| The description | Qualitative or quantitative variables that can be used to formulate ideas or conclusions | A group of data with news and meaning |
| In the form of | Numbers, letters or a set of characters. | Ideas and inferences |
| Collected via | Measurements, experiments, etc. | Link data and make inferences |
| Represented in | A structure, such as tabular data, data tree, data graph, etc. | Language, ideas and thoughts based on data |
| Analysis | Not analyzed | Always analyzed |
| Sense | Does not carry any specific meaning | Carries the meaning that has been assigned by interpreting the data |
| Interrelationship | Information Collected | Data processed |
Types of Data:
- Qualitative data: It is less accurate and can not be recorded in terms of numbers. For example skin color, intelligence, etc
- Quantitative data: It is more accurate and can be recorded in terms of numbers. for example height, weight, etc.
The data is perceived through the senses, these integrate them and generate the necessary information to produce the knowledge that is what finally allows decisions to be taken to carry out the daily actions that ensure social existence.
For example, a company collects information from a customer and obtains this:
Juan Perez, 30, 154465655, San Martin 1234 Buenos Aires.
All these are data.
Then we have the INFORMATION: it is a set of processed and related data, data that makes sense.
The above data can be processed, sorted and analyzed to become useful information:
Note that even more information can be obtained from the data: the country was not present, but with the city, it can be deduced. Nor was his sex, but by name, it follows that he is male. All of that is INFORMATION.
Basic concept
The first thing that we must be clear about is what each term is, then we will describe it in the best possible way.
- Data is nothing more than a symbolic representation of some situation or knowledge, without any semantic sense, describing situations and facts without transmitting any message. It can be a number, a letter, or a fact.
- While the information is a set of data, which are properly processed so that in this way, they can provide a message that contributes to the decision-making process when solving a problem, in addition to increasing knowledge, in the users who have access to such information.
- The information or message is much larger than the data since the information is composed of a set of data of different types.
- Another remarkable feature of the information is that it is a message that has communicational meaning and a social function. While the data does not reflect any message and it is usually difficult to understand by itself for any human being, lacking utility if it is isolated or without other data groups that create a coherent message.
Conclusion
As we can see, the main difference focuses on the message that can transmit the information, and that data alone cannot perform. A lot of data is needed to create a message or information.
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