The relationship between data and information

Data and information are interrelated. Data is a record reflecting the attributes of objective things and a concrete form of information. After data is processed, it becomes information; Information needs to be digitized and converted into data before storage and transmission.

The symbol represented by the receiver after identifying the information is called data. The function of data is to reflect the information content and be recognized by the receiver. Sound, symbols, images and numbers have become the main data forms of human communication information. Therefore, information is the meaning of data, and data is the carrier of information.

Extended data:

For example, some people say that "a person has a nose on his mouth and eyes on his nose", because this is expected, so you get little information from this news. But if someone says "there is a mouth on the nose and eyes on the mouth", it will be very shocking, because this is unexpected and the amount of information is very large. This shows that the more unpredictable a piece of information is, the more information it contains.

In fact, the basic function of information is to eliminate the uncertainty of people's understanding of things. Information quantity refers to the information measurement and content needed to select an event from N equal possible events. From this definition, the amount of information is closely related to probability.

In the process of information processing, the information carrier can reflect the information content. By improving the ability to process this information, human beings have continuously increased their understanding of nature and human society. In modern society, the role of information is inestimable. A valuable economic intelligence can help the factory get huge profits, an accurate weather forecast can prevent people's lives and property from suffering heavy losses, and an important military intelligence can make our own side win more with less ... Information has become an important resource-information resources.

The rapid and accurate transmission of information has always been closely related to economic and social life. Long before language appeared, humans had primitive communication tools such as ropes, horns, drums and firelight. There are many beacon towers in China.

When the enemy invades the border, adjacent beacon towers will light bonfires one after another and quickly transmit emergency information. With the formation of human language, the application of digital counting, the popularization of printing technology and the development of electronic technology, qualitative changes have taken place in information transmission, which has greatly promoted economic and social development.

In probability theory, P(x) is used to represent the probability of an event occurring in n equal possible events, that is, p (x) =1/n. The information amount I(x) is defined as: i (x) = log2n =-log2 (1/n) =-log2p (x). Combined with the knowledge of probability theory, by extension, the following formula can be used to express the average amount of information brought by a large number of data.

Note: This average amount of information is not an arithmetic average, but a statistical average of probability theory-mathematical expectation value.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia-Data and Information