2nd Class Computers Science What is Data and Information?

What is Data and Information?

Introduction

Data is unorganized facts that need to be processed.

Data in computing is the group of numbers, letters, punctuations, etc. When data is given to the computer, the computer analyzes for types of operation to be done for the given data. After performing the required operation by the processing part of computer, the information is displayed.

The Instruction and data are permanently stored in secondary storage device, such as, hard disk, compact disk and loaded in to the primary memory such as, RAM when computer boot up.

Types of Data 

Data is divided into three types:

• Alphabetic data
• Numeric data
• Alphanumeric data

Alphabetic Data

There are twenty - six alphabets in English language. These 26 alphabets are used to -present alphabetic data.

Numeric Data

Numeric data contains ten digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and decimal point, also called base ten number system. All these three types of data is converted in machine language in the form of binary bits or 0's and 1's in the computer.

Alphanumeric Data

Alphanumeric data is used to represent alphabetic data, numeric data, special characters 'such as / \ *, ?@) and symbols.

Information

Information is organized or processed data. For example, 85, 90 and 30 are numbers i.e. data. By themselves, they do not reveal what they are. However, if they are written as:

When data is processed and presented in an organized way to make it useful it is called information.

            Subject            English              Science              Mathematics

            Marks               85                       90                         30