Information And Data : Introduction

Computers do not work with information. Information is something which has a meaning. As computers are machines they can not understand the meaning of sentences like "Jane was born on the 14/06/75". Instead computers just store sequences of letters and numbers. They do not know what these sequences mean. The sequences which the computer stores are called data.

• Information : Something which has a meaning to a human being.
• Data : Numbers, words etc. which have no meaning by themselves.

Here are some examples of data and information :

Data can become information when it is given a context. For example :

• The word "Sausage" is data because it has no meaning by itself. It does not tell us anything. But when it is placed in the context of the sentence "The sausage is hot" it does tell us something (that the sausage is hot), so it becomes information.
• The number 190387 is data, but when it is placed in the context of being John's date of birth (the 19th of March 1987) it becomes information.

The link between information and data is often described like this :

Information = Data + Context

GCSE ICT Companion 04 - (C) P Meakin 2004