Brilliant thing I said today

[yesthattom]

Him: “[the database] has that information.”

Me: “Let me politely disagree with you. It has that data. It doesn’t have that information. Your job is to come up with the information.”

Comments

'cause I'm a DBA and feeling silly....

[awfief.livejournal.com]

my database brings all the info to the yard....
damn right, it's better than yours....
my database brings all the knowledge to the yard.....
damn right, it's better than yours....

But yes, that's true. and honestly, if it was the matter of running a query, you'd just do it yourself, right?

Re: 'cause I'm a DBA and feeling silly....

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

> But yes, that's true. and honestly, if it
> was the matter of running a query, you'd
> just do it yourself, right?

Precisely.

Re: 'cause I'm a DBA and feeling silly....

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

This reminds me of the Goldmine stuff I wrote (with you and Hal) for the reports that let people see the leads, etc. The data was all there, we just had to put it in a format that made sense for people looking for it.

Re: 'cause I'm a DBA and feeling silly....

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

You could teach us, but you'd have to charge!

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

What's the difference between data and information?

[catwithbell.livejournal.com]

The data are just the random facts and figures.

It becomes information when they are correlated and applied with intelligence, becoming something useful to people.

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Ah. Bloody English. I was thinking of Claude Shannon's information. I think that probably is just data. Or, if not, something even less useful than data. Words changing meaning in different contexts are fair enough in general, but when the context isn't that different => confusion.

[catwithbell.livejournal.com]

Frequently, those words are used fairly interchangeably. yesthattom was being all clever.
I am amused by snark. :)

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

I suppose "that" was a particularly important word in his snark :-)

[sweh.livejournal.com]

I'd phrase it a little differently; "information" is an interpretation of "data".

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

I'd tweak that to: "Information" is the organization of "data".

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Not sure. I'd say that "organising" is merely one way of getting to an interpration. "Corrolation" (catwithbell's word) is another.

example: tcpdump of a telnet session. The data are the packets. Organising the data could be "sort by packet size"; that doesn't provide information.. it provides an avenue to get information (eg smallest packet, largest packet) but it isn't, itself, information.

The problem is that information at one level may merely be data to another problem (what's the largest packet size? 128. What's the MTU? 1500. Two pieces of information. But the question is "could the MTU be splitting packets?" and so those two pieces of information are merely data to the real question; where the ultimate information is "MTU is not causing packet splits").

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Ah, sure, I see your point, and we're of course down Semantics Lane, here. By organization I did also mean correlation. "Organize" is certainly more than just "sort" at least in my parlance. So I generally agree. Establishing "meaningful" relationships among data is what makes information - meaningful being the operative term - relevancy to a particular context, with context being broadly social, sharply technical, or directly utilitarian like the example question in your last paragraph. Hard terms to play with because we're trying to define (to make a social/contextual meaning for) a term, "information", that itself describes the result of having placed data into contextual meaning.

*disappears in a puff of logic*

[sweh.livejournal.com]

Let me politely suggest that insulting and attacking people is the opposite of "brilliant".

See... doesn't work, does it? Use of the word "polite" doesn't make the sentence polite. You've attacked him and told him he's not doing his job. You've potentially antagonised him. Definitely would have done if someone said that to me ("who the fuck are you to tell me my job?" would be my gut reaction; even though I don't say that, you've invoked a defensive state of mind in me)

Even if it _is_ the guys job to provide the information, attacking him in this way is not optimal.

Witty? Without a doubt. Brilliant? No.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I suspect a lot of it is in the delivery. I think it's a very clever remark and not at all antagonistic if delivered in a friendly way.

[ted-badger.livejournal.com]

EXACTLY.

And then some analysis of that information might lead to a useful plan of action.

Radical stuff... I work with lots of "analysts" whose contribution is running a query, copying the data into Excel and sending out a "report".

Which "never gets looked at by anybody".

[broken-gizmo.livejournal.com]

Hah!

Wonderful quote. I've tried to explain the same thing to any number of people over the years.

Nicely done. :)