We talk about big data quite often these days, wanted to put some fundas about basics around data. Do you know the singular form of data ? How data differs from information vs. knowledge? How insights convert to actions? Here is my attempt towards answering some of these.
Data is often raw in binary represented as a number or a character or a string. Data is a plural version of datum. Information is anything which puts context to data. For example: The number 89 itself doesn’t mean anything unless we fit a context to say – the car’s speed is 89 kmph. Knowledge on other hand is about knowing how things around us work & the larger world is interconnected. It is obtained based on experiences, experiment, research, etc. In the below infographic I have tried to explain these terms using a simplified version of intelligence that can be embedded in cars. More on the infographic follows.
I have tried to take a very simplified version here. Now just imagine, when we talk about intelligent cars – we are usually talking about 100s of such parameters instead of just a single varaible (speed of car) ,all collected from multiple sensors obtained in realtime streaming format to make such decisions. Knowledge is obtained through predictive algorithms which continuously learns [in AI terms to say “adapts”] from data and help in making recommendation about safety of the vehicle. Now imagine these 100s of parameters collected every millisecond from 1000s of connected cars around you – this is what forms “Big Data”.
Hope you liked this post, I will be writing up more articles – as have been getting requests from friends around the globe. Stay tuned !