4.2 What Is Data?
Every year, thousands of earthquakes occur around the world. Most of them are so mild that they are barely noticed except by scientists with monitoring equipment. If we consider only those earthquakes that people feel, then perhaps 35 occur on a typical day. Some days, there may be only 10; on other days, there may be 40 or 50.
What we have just described is a way that earthquake occurrence might be reported through data—an assortment of items, many times numeric, that have been observed, measured, or collected by some means. These data items pertain to some experiment, event, or activity that we are interested in exploring. Data, sometimes referred to as “raw data,” represents the starting point for analysis that can be ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access