DAT - What is Data (Lesson)

What is Data?

Introduction

Data?  What is data? Is data just numbers? Is data only items we supply on request?  

Today, the concept is Big Data. We are accumulating data faster than any other time in history. Technology is enabling the collection of Big Data.  Everyone is creating data.  The advent of the Internet, the World Wide Web, social networks, communication changes, marketing changes, and .... We could continue adding more items. Everywhere we look, people are on phones, texting and using the internet, allowing the global positioning system (GPS) to know where you are, etc.  All of this is data! It has gone from you into the "cloud" and to someone else.

Crossing the Curriculum: A Video About Data in Medicine

As we continue our look at computer science and the effects of computer science in the world around us let's look at the following video that crosses the curriculum.  The topic of this video is medicine, covering various science fields, data which covers the math fields of statistics, as well as the computer science which pulls the fields together.  Without computer science aiding the other fields, many of the discoveries would not be found as data is becoming too large to manipulate by hand.

In this module we will look at data, small and large and how stories and solutions can be extrapolated from the data with quality analysis.

OER VIDEO SOURCED FROM CODE.ORG AND USED ACCORDING TO TERMS OF USE.