[Sigia-l] various definitions of "information"

[christina wodtke]

> time :-) splitting hairs on this. It depends on the recipient. Or does it?

It seems to-- reminds me of experience design-- can you design an
experience? If a tree falls in the woods..?

> Is there really a difference between data and information?

Again, from the same book (can you tell I'm enjoying it?)

data is transformed into information by adding value in one of several ways

Contextualized: we know for what purpose the data was gathered
Categorized: we know the units of analysis or key components of the data
Calculated: the data has been analyzed mathematically or statistically
Corrected: errors removed
Condensed: the data is summarized for easy digestion

no quotes 'cause a paraphrased here and there... though I left in their
rather twee use of alliteration-- still, the bulk of these make sense, and
do point to a movement from data to information-- consider log analysis, and
how hard it is to make design decisions from it-- you have to decide what is
a statistically significant sample, if the data is good, what it means in
context of user, time of year, etc... and so on before you even begin to
understand what it means....