In this blog, we are going to learn about data and information in detail with examples.

Introduction

• Data means value or set of values . Data items refers to a single unit of values.
• Data is represented in the from of text/numbers/figures/ tables/graphs/pictures etc. A computer Language is incomplete without data.

• Information is derived from data, such as:

  • per capita income, Average Population of the states , price index ,etc.
  • In a month we everyday get the newspaper then at the end we can calculate the bill from the data of the cost of newspaper we daily receive.
  • Data about some persons in a group:

• From the score of an individual cricket player we can draw following information:

  • Total Runs Scored
  • Highest score
  • Average
  • Strike rate
  • No. of Sixes
  • No. of fours
• This information helps the planners/analysts/to make decisions.
• Info. In Computer: A computer is an electronic device that manipulates the information presented in the form of data.
• Data: Data is nothing but a collection of numbers, alphabets and symbols combined to represent information.
• Entity: An entity possesses some attributes and some values can be allocated to it. E.g. student entity in a college.

Fields, Records and Files

• The way data is organized into hierarchy of fields, records and files reflect relationship between attributes, entities and entity sets.
• Field is single elementary unit of information representing an attribute of an entity.
• Record is collection of field values of given entity.
• File is collection of records of entities in a given entity set.
• Records may be fixed length or variable length.
• Fixed Length Records:- All the records contain same data items with same amount of space assigned to each data item.
• Variable Length Records:- All the records contain same data items with same amount of space assigned to each data item.
• Example Mobile number record-Some will have 1 mobile numbers others may have 2 or more.
• Students can opt for varied courses. Some are taking 6 courses while some have 5 courses.