Information

Information is data put within context. It's a concept bound to that of metadata, data that refers to the meaning of other data. For example if in a table of data one of the columns is labeled as "batch number" 07012007, one string in that same column, gets a particular meaning. Information is the distillation of data or data with a meaning, but this still is not knowledge

[Dürsteler, 2007]

Data are observational measurements that have been recorded in some way, whereas information is data that is generalized, ordered and contextualized in ways that give them meaning. Information thus is selective toward data, separating the important from the relatively unimportant.

[Mennis et al., 2000]

Information, in its earliest historical meaning, corresponds to the act of informing, or to the act of giving form or shape to the mind, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Inform itself comes (via French) from the Latin verb "informare”, to give form to, to form an idea of.

[Bertini and Lalanne, 2009]

data is transformed into information; information provides knowledge; and wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge

[Pritchard, 2010]

see Knowledge Discovery for an explanation of the relationship between Data, Information, Insight, Model, Pattern, Hypothesis, Knowledge and Knowledge Crystallization.

see also: Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom

References

• [Bertini and Lalanne, 2009] Bertini, E. and Lalanne, D. 2009. Surveying the complementary role of automatic data analysis and visualization in knowledge discovery. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Visual Analytics and Knowledge Discovery: integrating Automated Analysis with interactive Exploration (Paris, France, July 28 - 28, 2009). VAKD '09. ACM, New York, NY, 12-20
• [Dürsteler, 2007] Juan C. Dürsteler, Diagrams for Visualisation, Inf@Vis! (The digital magazine of InfoVis.net), Created at: Jan. 7, 2007, Retrieved at: Jan. 11, 2007, http://www.infovis.net/printMag.php?num=186&lang=2
• [Mennis et al., 2000] Jeremy L. Mennis, Donna J. Peuquet, and Liujian Qian, A conceptual framework for incorporating cognitive principles into geographical database representation, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 14(6):510-520, 2000.
• [Pritchard, 2010] Tony Pritchard, The Science of Information Visualisation: a provocation, Tony Pritchard's Blog, created at: April 3, 2010, retrieved at: April 9, 2010, http://tonypritchard.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/the-science-of-information-visualization-a-provocation/