On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 1:20 PM, Burkett, William [USA] <burkett_william@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for "mark token type", John.
My primary reason for jumping into this discussion is to submit/contribute/offer some simple - and in my mind, clear and unambiguous - definitions for data and information that I've found useful and have worked for me. Pierce's triad fits my definitions/uses
perfectly:
Data is always a physical mark.
Well, then, following pierce, kant, and all the rest, the number three hundred and sixty five would not be data.
WCB 2013-01-14T09:27:44MT: Ah – this is the beauty of the work we do: it depends on what you mean by “the number three
hundred and sixty five”. The characters that I am reading in this email that comprise the part of the sentence “the number three hundred and sixty five”
are definitely data. Because I read English and understand numbers as used in mathematics, I interpret that data to mean (i.e., obtain information from the data) a mathematical number that is part of or corresponds to knowledge in my head.
WCB 2013-01-14T09:30:45MT: if, however, you mean to use “the number three hundred and sixty five”
as a reference to a mathematical notion that is not connected a particular representation (e.g., as written here as a character string) and is not connected to the knowledge that one or more human beings have in their head, then I have two responses to that:
(1)
There is no such “mathematical notion” that is independent of representation or gray-matter knowledge – it doesn’t exist.
(2)
Even if it DID exist, it’s existence would be entirely moot because we’ve already disconnected it from any gray-matter knowledge, meaning we humans
don’t know about and its existence is currently immaterial to anything we do or think (which isn’t to say it may not have a material effect on us). It’s existence becomes real or apparent to us once it is invented or discovered.
WCB 2013-01-14T09:37:35MT: so I think we’re probably operating with different underlying ontologies (in the philosophical sense) about the world.
Only some perhaps black areas on a particular white background would be wb;data.
WCB 2013-01-14T09:38:48MT: strictly speaking, I think all the black areas would be data. Whether or not I can interpret them (and
thus derive information to add to my knowledge) is a different matter.
Information is a token - the meaning interpreted from data/marks or encoded in/by the articulation of data/marks (the intangible stuff "put into" or "derived from" data)
In other words, the number three hundred and sixty five would be information.
WCB 2013-01-14T09:40:05MT: My interpretation of it as a mathematical notion certainly is information. If I attached it to some other data, e.g., the character
string “days in a year” (a data/mark), then I have new/different information.
This is not plausable. Values of what others call data types, such as the natural numbers, are what most think of as data. This discussion mostly has said no, only when you know the statement in which the number is used, do you have a
datum. Because by the time we are doing data processing, we know what those bits in the computer represent, a number, a character, a truth value, a color ....
WCB 2013-01-14T09:41:02MT: I didn’t get why it isn’t plausible. I acknowledge that most others are using “data” with a different meaning, and I have offered
up my own position solely as a discussion point. I have no opinion as of yet on the meaning of the term “datum” wrt these discussions and have not offered an opinion on its meaning.
Knowledge is a compendium (so to speak) of types that only exists in human minds. It's used to ascertain the information/token when perceiving or creating data/marks.
So, the statement that there are 365 days in a year would be knowledge.
WCB 2013-01-14T09:44:07MT: As above, the character string “
there are 365 days in a year would be knowledge”
is data. My knowledge of English and social time-related conventions allows me to interpret (derived information from) it and conclude that the information conveyed by that data is consistent with my knowledge of the world and is true. I can’t say what “knowledge”
is beyond that it is probably a biochemicalelectrical pattern that one’s brain creates and records. (Hmm … I guess that pattern is “data”, too, then!
J)
Bill
I have been wondering what the IT consulting tribe has meant by this for more than 20 years.
This is very helful to understand, but I am not sure is so helpful to apply.