What is data?

Take a look around; what do you see? At the time of writing this article, I saw various items arranged in the corners of the room: the TV was in one corner of the room, a table and four chairs around it are in the other side, dozens of picture frames of my children have been installed on the walls, it is burning in another corner the heater and its flame is blue and…

Every feature is a data about the world around us. Features can be related to human activities, as mentioned above, or, like galaxies and their elements, may be outside the scope of human activities.

What is the source of the data?

By the definition given in the previous section, it seems that any element in the world can produce data. In other words, the data is inherent. In the above example, one can also think about the type of TV, its size, its color, its weight and its price; undoubtedly, each of these cases is another data that originates from TV.

Data creation

As we said in the previous section, data exists inherently, but the discovery of different forms and dimensions of data depends on our explorative mind and can be created in different ways, which are the product of our minds. In the above example, the color of the TV can be divided by the color of its frame, the color of the text (its brand name), the color of its back,…, and separate data can be recorded for each item. As we can see, new data can be created by thinking about any data.

Data owner

With the above talk, a lot of data can be considered as a product of human thought. As a result, the issue of ownership is quite obvious. However, some data is free from any thoughts, and the owner of the data is the one who owns the element.

Creating value with data

Data does not have a special value in itself, but it will be valuable by processing. In the above example, I said that a heater was burning around me. This data conveys at least two information to us: (1) the house in question does not have a boiler, and (2) the time of writing the report was on the cold season.

From the fact that you heard that there is a table and four chairs in the house, you can not conclude with certainty how many person lived with me, but when you put along with the data  of my children’s framed picture, you may conclude with higher probability that I have two children.

Product data

You will find that data helps us to understand our surroundings, and by putting the data together we get more accurate information about our surroundings. From birth, human beings are learning and increasing their awareness of their environment. Data is the raw material for gaining knowledge. Even a baby quickly realizes that crying can attract the attention of those around him and ensure his survival! Gradually learns many other activities through observation, trial and error. In recent years, a lot of effort has been made to accelerate this process of learning from data, and a lot of work is being done on it in a branch called artificial intelligence.

Data maintenance

In the past millennia, data was recorded on clay tablets on a small scale, and it was not easy to maintain and transfer. Later, with the discovery of paper and the possibility of writing on them, data recording became more widespread. This story changed a lot after the invention of computer technology, and today an unimaginable amount of data can be stored in a very small physical space.

Big data

By enrolling students and referring them to schools, it is determined how many students are there in each level. A bank’s customers are identified at the end of each day by reading the latest number that has been announced. The amount of downloads of customers of a telecommunication operator changes at every moment and a considerable new number. So as you can see, the frequency of change of some data is long-term, for some it is short-term and for some it is instantaneous. For several years, data production speeds have greatly increased due to digital technologies. Data generated from phenomena that are instantaneous and very high in frequency are defined as big data.