Data
- Definition from princeton.edu
A collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn.
In programming terms, "data" is a written text, image, video or sound that represents something real. When you hear the word "house" you immediately have an image in your head; the same might happen with the word "air plain" for example.
This is called "variable" in the IT world because "house" can be any type of house, it is not specific enough, it could be a mansion or a Victorian cottage. The word "house " is the variable name, a picture of a house can be the content of this variable. It could be that the address number of a house is the data you want to store, instead of a picture...
Consider the variables "name", "telephone number", "postcode"; they all represent a person's information. How can a programmer use that within a system?
If you are a restaurant owner for example, you can use a computer program to:
- Calculate which day of the week people eat more fish than meet so you can make a intelligent order and save some money that day.
- Pay your employees using Internet banking.
- Receive orders from clients via email.
Which data should be collected? How this data will be arranged in the system and who is going to have access to it? Is it necessary to encrypt the stored data (the database)? The Data analyst is the one responsible answer all these questions.
