Week 11: Clear

Image created by Josh: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geojanitor/2432843590/

Data vs. Information. Is there even a difference? Most people, when they hear these two words, equate them to each other. I, for the most part, was one of those people. It's so easy to give in the dark side and say, "Hey, data is the same thing as information." This isn't true. But, the truth is easy enough to understand. Data is raw facts and figures: how many home runs Roger Maris hit in 1961 (a record setting 61 for you non baseball fans) or the number of licks it took to get to the center of a certain Tootsie Pop (the world may never know). Information, on the other hand, is data in context. It is used to answer questions and to support decision making. Information is a trend line where data is the scatter plot. Data is the ammunition. Information is the gun.


I am a HUGE fan of the relationship between data and information. It sounds sad now that I say it, but it is true. I'm currently in a Statistics for Business Decisions class and I love it. AP Stats was one of my favorite classes in high school. Stats is all about taking vast tracts of data and turning it into information. The fact that I can take thousands of numbers and turn them into a single solution to a problem fascinates me. The more data I have, the more confident I can be with my conclusions. The more data I have, the closer I can be to the truth. Probabilities and confidence intervals all come from data. When something so simple can be so powerful, you have my full attention.

Data is extremely important in the business environment. As I mentioned above, statistics is all about making decisions based on data. A class I am taking right now is specifically about statistics in a business environment to make business decisions. Without data, managers would not have information. Without information, managers are not informed. Without being informed, managers can not make good business decision. It all starts with data.