Becoming a Data Head

CHAPTER 2What Is Data?

“If we have data, let's look at data. If all we have are opinions, let's go with mine.”

—Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO

Many people work with data without having a dialect for it. However, we want to ensure we're all speaking the same language to make the rest of the book easier to follow. So, in this chapter, we'll give you a brief crash course on data and data types. If you've had a basic statistics or analytics course, you'll know the terms that follow but there may be parts of our discussion not covered in your class.

DATA VS. INFORMATION

The terms data and information are often used interchangeably. In this book, however, we make a distinction between the two.

Information is derived knowledge. You can derive knowledge from many activities: measuring a process, thinking about something new, looking at art, and debating a subject. From the sensors on satellites to the neurons firing in our brains, information is continually created. Communicating and capturing that information, however, is not always simple. Some things are easily measurable while others are not. But we endeavor to communicate knowledge for the benefit of others and to store what we've learned. And one way to communicate and store information is by encoding it. When we do this, we create data. As such, data is encoded information.

An Example Dataset

Table 2.1 tells the story of a company. Each month, they run a different marketing campaign online, on television, or in print ...