Data vs Information

• ·         A collection of data arranged for ease and speed of search and retrieval. - database
• ·         Raw material, from which you can draw conclusions - data
• ·         Knowledge, intelligence, a particular piece of data with a special meaning or function. - Information

List specific data that the school collects about each student. What information could be gathered using all the student data?

·         Score in individual subjects > class average in individual subject / average as a whole > school average in individual subject / in all subjects

·         Address of students > maximum students from each state

And so on

a.    Write examples of data and information related to any of the sites. 

Database schema of imdb may look like i.imgur.com/pDq0n.png

Say there is a TV series called Mr. Robot

In the title table there may be a row which has title of an episode, season id , episode no and lot hell of data, but it is of no use without a proper query made to all tables

On the other hand if I query for keyword, say episode 5 season 2 , I will get what exactly happened in this season, what was the audience rating and so on, this might be an information worth reading for me.

a.    State why you believe data collections of this type could be important.

Information is something of importance, to spend my next 45 minutes watching a TV episode which is crap ( I don’t want that) – above mentioned data collection just helped me, since data is arranged in a structured manner, which may be queried to give useful information for me.

 3. Choose a website that displays data that might be stored in a database; find 10 data items on the site and list 5 pieces of information that could be gleaned from the data.

Let’s take example of auctions.godaddy.com , each row in each table mentioned below is data which has no value for me individually:

       I.            There might be a table called auction Table with a serial id as primary key, domain id being referred from domain table as foreign key , a seller id mapped to another table as foreign key , price and so on

    II.            There may be another table with seller details which are also referred in table in point 1.

 III.            There might be a table which has traffic details, each visit as a row, and a column called domain id which is mapped to domain table as foreign key

 IV.            The domain table might have domain id referred in point 1 and point 3, which is also the primary key. There might be a value column being updated by nightly or weekly evaluation jobs running on the backend, there might be a name field which also will be unique key. There might be also a tld column to group them by tld id, tld id may be a foreign key to TLD table.

    V.            There might be a TLD table with id as primary key referred in point 4 as foreign key. TLD name which may have unique key constraint, also a column to specify whether godaddy supports direct transfer or not (True/false)

 VI.            There might be a Bids table, with bdId as primary key, a foreign key reference to auctionTable to identify for which auction entry this bid was made, To identify type of bid there might be a bidcategoryId, which may be a foreign key to Bidcategory Table. There might be expireOn column also, if bidcategoryId referes to buy now, it might be set to some default value.

VII.            There will be a BidCategory Table which might have data like fixed bid, make offer, buy now and so on

VIII.            There might be table called featuredAuction, it could have ids referred as foreign key from auction table, start and end time of being featured.

 IX.            There might be a currency table to identify, the seller preffered currency details, which might have foregn key reference in point 2 . Say a seller row in point two refers to currency with id 10, it might be named as USD, and signature as $

    X.             There might be a table to identified types of bids allowed for an auction entry in point 1. Table in point 6 identifies what buyer selected, but to identify what all options a an auction entry offer, there might be a table which has each row as auctionId, AllowedBidType

And so on

list 5 pieces of information that could be gleaned from the data:

                   I.            Say I want to buy a domain which starts with “hemant” and is available under auction, I might several joins in the query to get this information from above tables.

                II.            Say I want to buy a domain with minimum price as $2 or max price as $100, I might extract this information from above tables rows.

             III.            Say I want a domain with exactly 5 characters, this information is possible to be extracted.

             IV.            Say I want to buy a domain with traffic more than 100, this information can be extracted here

                V.            Say I want to buy a domain with highest no of bids ( which I think make to valuable), I may extract this information from above tables.

And so on

4. Give examples of how data becomes information for these two industries:

• film/movie

Example: Some Entity storing a data row like, personId, MovieId  , role id is of no use to me at first look, but when queried using the right joins, it can tell me casting information of a movie and I can choose what movie I want to see, based on what Star character I like.

• hospital/healthcare

Example: Some Entity in hospital database may say, personId, VisitDate, MedicationId

It is of no use to doctor, but if queried in right way, it can tell doctor that, antiviral course of this patient is already complete and no need to give more anti-viral medicine. This is the real information which saves patient from overdose.

5. Using this Lunch Room Data Report, answer the questions that follow.

a.    What does this report mean?

If I sum up first two columns vs last three columns, - they are equal, so, I got to know:

·         Date wise, it is trying to record sales, how many items sold to student, how many to Faculty.

·         Date wise, it wants to store, sale of each type of store available over the counter in a festival for fund raising.

b.    What data was collected?

See above

c.    What information does this table provide from the data collected?

See above

d.    How do you think this information is used by those reading the report?

See above

e.    Generate at least two conclusions based on the data provided.

See above

     f. Generate at least two questions that you would ask about the data provided.

·         On a day say, 4 Dec 2003, Pizza bar sold 126 items, out of these 126, how many sold to students?

·         On a day say, 6 Dec 2003, Soup/Salad Bar sold 30 items, but on 02 Dec 2003, it sold 63 items, what food item declined in sale, what went wrong with which food item ?