Use and Misuse of Terms - Knowledge, Information and Data (KID)

There is a bond between data, information and knowledge so it's often depicted as pyramid or a linear form. By keeping data at the base and converting data to information and further information is converted to knowledge.

According to my view Fig. 1.0 shows the structure of the KID (Knowledge, Information and Data) in a cyclic manner.

Fig. 1.0

I believe that knowledge helps use create a set of facts and figure which is data and then further data converts in to information and the cycle keeps on going. Also Shawn (2007) has similar kind of view where he say's

"Knowledge acts as an interpretant to turn data into information. The information we notice (we don't notice all information channelled toward us), might create some level of dissonance (its surprises us or we ask ourselves, "What's the story here?") and if we care about resolving this dissonance we create knowledge."(Shawn, (2007))

As I understand that a specific set of facts are relevant to someone else's information. For example, But data to one person is someone else's information. A commodities trader might stare at a computer screen of numbers which would look to most people as raw data. To the commodity trader, however, slight changes in the numbers convey messages which act as information they might convert to knowledge and take action. Consequently, context is a key ingredient acting as an underlay to all three concepts of data, information and knowledge. (Shawn, (2007))

But data to one person is someone else's information. A commodities trader might stare at a computer screen of numbers which would look to most people as raw data. To the commodity trader, however, slight changes in the numbers conveys messages which act as information they might convert to knowledge and take action. Consequently, context is a key ingredient acting as an underlay to all three concepts of data, information and knowledge.

According to Tuomi (1999) view, there is no "raw" data, since every measurable or collectable piece of fact has already been affected by the very knowledge process that made it measurable and collectable in the first place. Knowledge, embedded in our minds, is thus a prerequisite. We can instantiate some of this knowledge as information, which is explicit and processable. By examining the structure of this information, we may finally codify it into pure data, which, from an IS/IT perspective, is the most valuable of the three. Since only data can effectively be processed by computers, the value hierarchy should thus be turned around and have data on top (Tuomi, 1999).

Reference

1. Shawn, (2007), anecdote: data, information, knowledge: a sensemaking perspective. Available: http://www.anecdote.com.au/archives/2007/06/data_informatio_2.html [2/12/2009, 2009}.
   
2. Tuomi, I. (1999a), "Data is More Than Knowledge: Implications of the Reversed Knowledge Hierarchy for Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory", Journal of Management Information Systems, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 107-121