RE: Information, Data, taxonomy of knowing

["Aidan Ward" <aidan_ward@antelopes.com>]

Denizens,

"What is the difference between "information" and "data"? We looked up
these
words in dictionaries. We are still trying to understand if there is a
function/operational difference with these two words."

I have looked at all the replies to this request and while I do not
disagree with any of them, I find them disingenuous. I think they are
misleading and the misleading quality is in the language and the
separations it tries to enforce.

Data clearly implies what is given, i.e. our sense perceptions and our
measurements. However, these things are not simply "given" facts, they
depend on concepts we have whether se articulate them or not. Data is
already an interpretation, and the more we insist that it is not the
more we are intentionally blind to our assumptions.

I think the operational use of the word data is to denote something that
different observers can readily agree on as "facts". We choose not to
argue about this aspect of a problem in order to focus attention on
other questions. Whether that partitioning of what is a "whole" problem
is sensible may or may not come out in the analysis.

As I understand it, Deming consistently pointed to the important parts
of a problem being in the bits that could not be measured. A subtler
approach to the question of data is to ask in what ways treating it as a
given or fact aids or obscures our ability to understand the heart of
the problem.

Chapter and verse about the dangers to systems thinking in talking about
data is in Maturana and Varela. A fly is never "data" to the vision
system of a frog, it is part of a system that includes the capture of
the fly. The system cannot be understood when the data is abstracted.

Regards, Aidan Ward

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