Introduction to Data

What is Data?

Data is a sequence of bits with a value of one or zero. The singular of data is datum which represents a symbol. It's the building blocks of knowledge, waiting to be organized and interpreted. It is raw information, like facts, numbers, or symbols!

Why is Data important?

The world we are living in is rich with data. Any platform that has an online appearance and that accepts posting, logging, commenting, or electronic payments is gathering data. All that data is filled with potential if you can learn how to find it.
Data has a big value and is important for business. It is one of the most valuable assets that an organization has. The number of data insights is growing. It helps companies to grow.
Governments, nonprofit organizations, and academic facilities also strive to find insights in data that can help solve challenges, like poverty, climate change, disease, inequality, and terrorism.

Problem Solver

Data is a problem solver. Analysts extract valuable insights for companies by processing the data. They follow a process to gather, clean, and transform data to answer the question, what is the data talking about in a business? The goal of this process is to use the insights to help make better and more informed decisions and solve problems.

Data till Date

From traffic patterns and music downloads to web histories and medical records, data is stored, recorded, and analyzed to enable technology and services that the world needs daily.

According to the Earthweb, by Jason Wise, the world generates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. There are billion billions or millions of trillions in one quintillion.

By 2025, global data creation is projected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes. Zettabytes is a number 1 followed by 21 zeroes!

Types of Data

Data might be facts, statistics, opinions, or any kind of content that is recorded in some format. When data analysts organize data, they divide it into two forms:

Structured Data

Structured data can be organized in rows and columns. If you can organize information within data into groups, based on specific characteristics, then those groups or structured data. Examples include names, dates, addresses, stock information, card numbers, and geolocation.

This form of data is very useful because of its manipulation and organization.

Unstructured Data

Unstructured data is everything other than structured data. They have no predefined format. Examples of unstructured data include images, texts, tweets, comments, medical records, and even song lyrics.

What is a Database?

A database is a collection of structured data in a computer system. It is highly organized so that the data is accessible by queries and computation software.

Most databases are organized as relational databases. It is a collection of multiple data sets or tables that link together. For example, one table might show names and addresses, while the other might show properties.