First Blog Assignment

Q1. Define the meaning of the terms data, information and knowledge according to Thomas Davenport's Information Hierarchy (1997).

a. Data :The raw material of information.
b. Information:Data organized and presented by someone.
c. Knowledge :Information read, heard or seen and understood.[1]


Q2. What are the characteristics of the above terms?

a. data: Data refer to a collection of facts usually collected as the result of experience , observation or experiment, or processes within a computer system, or a set of premises. This may consist of numbers, words, or images, particularly as measurements or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as a lowest level of abstraction from which information and knowledge are derived.It can exist in any form, usable or not.

b. Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions.

c. Knowledge:Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject with the ability to use it for a specific purpose if appropriate.it is the application of data and information; answers "how" questions[2][4]


Q3. Give and example for each term mentioned above.

data: there are 697units in the warehouse
information: the apple become red and the farmers start to pick it.
knowledge: If the water is frozen, then we know the temperature of the water is below or equal to 0 degree [3]

Q4. Is there any possibility of a fourth level of Information Hierarchy? Elaborate.

yes, the fourth level of Information Hierarchy is Wisdom: Distilled and integrated knowledge and understanding.wisdom is an extrapolative and non-deterministic, non-probabilistic process. It calls upon all the previous levels of consciousness, and specifically upon special types of human programming (moral, ethical codes, etc.). [1][2]


reference:

[1]http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~ray/Affiliates98/tsld005.htm

[2]Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro and Anthony Mills. (2004) Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom. accessed at: http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm

[3] Thomas H. Davenport, Laurence Prusak. Information Ecology. In Chapter 1 Information and Its Discontents: An Introduction. Oxford University Press US, 2009. PP.9,10.

[4]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge (Accessed:15 January 2009)