Week Eleven Building Knowlegde

Lecture

This week’s lecture was about data, information and knowledge. We defined what each of these are, and according to the lecturer, “datum was a fact or proposition, information was a collection of facts or data that relate to each other, and knowledge was the sum or range of what has been perceived, discovered or learnt.” We learnt that without data there is no information, from this, without information there is no knowledge. This is the importance of these. Without one there is none of the rest. It was described to me that there was a pyramid, similar to a food pyramid, with data being the base, information being the middle and knowledge being the point or top. After understanding each of these we were presented with the conclusion that we then gather an understanding. With these strategies, we taught that assignments will be logical if we have each.

Tutorial

In tutorial, the first thing we were asked to do was to go onto the yahoo website and define; data, information and knowledge. So, the yahoo definition for data is, “In general, data consist of propositions that reflect reality. A large class of practically important propositions are measurements or observations of a variable. Such propositions may comprise numbers, words, or images.” information is” Information is the result of processing, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the receiver. In other words, it is the context in which data is taken” and knowledge was “Knowledge is what is known. Like the related concepts truth, belief, and wisdom, there is no single definition of knowledge on which scholars agree, but rather numerous theories and continued debate about the nature of knowledge”.

We were also asked to list five companies that collect data.

1. Credit card companies- address and phone number, in case credit card is stolen.
2. Doctor- medical history donor information.
3. Government- statistics.
4. Taxi service- collects your information when you call from a land line and you are permanently logged into the system.
5. Banks collect information from clients so that they can give information about their banks account and also so that they can give updates on clients banks statements.
   

All these organizations collect data and information so they can perform better for their clients’ health and interests.

Reading 1 Summary

The article on the webpage www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm looks at the difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom.
Data: symbols.
Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions.
Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how" questions.
Understanding: appreciation of "why".
Wisdom: evaluated understanding.

Reading 2 Summary

This reading is also about data, information and knowledge. The reading presented the relations between the three. It then finally went on to discuss some questions they listed there like what is it? Who is collecting it? And why are they collecting it?