## What is data?

"What is data?" by University of Guelph McLaughlin Library, 2019, CC BY-NC-SA https://youtu.be/pg12U1BAnoA

Data can be described as the raw material for information. By itself, data has/has1 no meaning; context and interpretation are needed to answer the questions who, what, where and when, in other words: to transform the data into information. That information can then be used to support an argument and thus serve science, public administration or business.

Data collected by the researcher himself is called primary data. Data from other sources are called secondary: these are already existing data, for instance found in a government database or a scientific publication.

Primary data can be created in many ways:

- observation
- measurement
- interviews
- case studies
- surveys
- crowdsourcing (contributions from interested lay people to research).

Another classification for data is qualitative and quantitative: qualitative data are not numerical; quantitative data are.

A dataset is a collection of matching data. Once data are published openly, it is usually in the form of a dataset.

A data paper describes, according to custom within a scientific discipline, how a particular dataset available online should be interpreted.

Metadata are data about data.

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Note

1.

In the traditional sense, data is the plural of date. A date is 'something that is given' and can be counted (1 date, 2 dates, 3 dates etc). Example:
`"are these dates suitable for everyone?"`
When talking about dates in science, it is not common to count dates. Any quantity of it can be referred to as dates, whether in the singular or plural form. For example, the New York Times uses the singular and plural forms side by side:

`"the survey data are still being analysed"`

and

`"the first year for which data is available".`

This course also uses singular and plural side by side for data.