First Blog Question

1. Define the meaning of the terms data, information and knowledge according to Thomas Davenport's Information Hierarchy (1997).

Data: Data is represented as an item or event out of context with no relation to other things.

Information: A message, usually in the form of a document or an audible or visible communication, meant to change the way a receiver perceives something and to influence judgment or behavior; data that makes a difference.

Knowledge: A fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms.

2. What are the characteristics of the above terms?
Data: unprocessed, unorganized and discrete.
Information: Timeliness, Sufficiency, level of detail or aggregation, redundancy, understandability
Knowledge: Knowing is a human process, not a machine process, it is the result of cognition, it is experiential, it belongs to communities.

3. Give and example for each term mentioned above.
Data can be detailed or sampled. Detailed data would facts about every occurrence of something (e.g. the weight of every packet of Twisties leaving the factory). Sampled data would use typical measurements to represent the whole (e.g. weighing every 100th packet of Twisties)
Data can come in various forms: textual (e.g. names, addresses), numeric (e.g. heights, ages), graphical (e.g. pictures of faces), aural (e.g. Morse Code dots and dashes), visual (e.g. the individual frames of a movie are data that are processed by the brain into moving picture information when the frames are shown at 24 frames per second; fingerprints

Information: A school database holding information on teachers, subjects, classrooms and students .The Roads and Traffic authority holding information on automobiles and holders of driver’s licensees. Video stores holding information on borrowers and videos.

4. Is there any possibility of a fourth level of Information Hierarchy? Elaborate.
Yes. There is a possibility of a fourth level of Information Hierarchy which is Wisdom. Wisdom is an extrapolative and non-deterministic, non-probabilistic process. Wisdom is the ability and the process by which we also discern, or judge, between right and wrong. Wisdom can only process by human.Reference:
http://www.cognitivedesignsolutions.com/KM/Understanding.htm(Access on March 25, 2009)

http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au/vceit/infodata/data-characteristics.htm(Access on March 25, 2009)