Week Eleven

Lecture Summary

The main message of this weeks lecture was how data, information, knowlwedge and wisdom, all link to one another in the sort of hierarchal form: data leads to information, information leads to knowledge, and over time, knowledge leads to wisdom. It went through the characteristics, importance, relationship, and examples of each term, which the tutorial activities required us to investigate anyway.

Tutorial Tasks

Before I came up with my own definition for each of the terms, data, information and knowledge, I found two definitions that I liked on each; one being a simple defintion and the other taking the meaning of the word to a more complex and thoughtful level of understanding.

For Data, the simple definition that I liked best was from http://www.dictionary.com/, which states that data is essentially: "A body of facts, statistics, or items of information" and also defined it as a "matter of direct observation". A more in depth look, however, came from http://www.success.co.il/is/dik.html, which contains a definition of 'Data' by Proffessor Maria Teresa Bagetti: "Data is every thing or every unit that could increase the human knowledge...and that can be recorded, on whichever support, or orally handed. Data can arouse information and knowledge in our minds". From these two definitions, I came up with my own meaning of data, and it is this: As basic units of facts, statistics, or any other matter of direct observation, data has the potential to increase the knowledge we have by giving us basic starting points to work from.

The basic meaning I found for Information is from Proffessor Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic: "Information is the end product of data processing". A definition that gives slightly more meaning to the word is by Proffessor Michael Buckland who says that Information is "anything percieved as potentially signifying something...and that which is learned from some evidence or communication". The meaning I make from these is: Information in itself has a meaning, which can only be gathered in the mind by interpretting data, or by having it directly communicated to you.

From dictionary.com, I found the perfect simple definition for Knowledge, and that is thats it's "The sum of what is known". The more complex meaning is from http://www.success.co.il/is/dik.html by Proffessor Haidar Moukdad who states knowledge "is a resevoir of information that is stored in the human mind. It essentially constituted the information that can be 'retrieved'from the human mind without the need to consult information sources". What I interpret from this meaning is that knowledge cannot be taken away from you.

For our second activity, this is the graphical representation of the relationship between data, information, knowledge and wisdom, that I came up with:

As you can see above, It is like climbing stairs to reach the ultimate destination which is wisdom, but everybody starts from the bottom because wisdom only comes with experience. Understanding this relationship is helpful when thinking of my studies in university, as it gives me an incentive to work hard because we all want to achieve a level of knowledge that will one day make us wise, becuase without achieving this, I wouldn't be satisfied. So, knowing that we have to start at the bottom with the basic data and information, helps us concentrate on the 'boring' parts of learning so that we can make our own interpretation, which if we have correct, illustrates our knowledge and thus later on, our wisdom.

Readings

The difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom

1. In the first reading, the content of the human mind is divided into five main categories, being data, information, knowledge, understandin and wisdom. According to this, each category represents a different state of knowledge held by a persons mind that goes like this: Data refers to the starting point where you recognise symbols but have not yet made any meaning out of them; Information is the stage when the data has been processed for utility, and there are now answers to who?, what?, where? and when?; Knowledge refers to the stage when you are able to anser the 'how' questions with ease; Understanding is when you have reached a level of appreciation for the knowledge and information, and you clearly understand the 'Why?'; Last of all, Wisdom is the product of evaluated understanding.