Information, by a broad definition, is structured, processed and organised information. It gives context to data and enables effective decision making. For instance, a single consumer’s sale in a restaurant is information this becomes data when the company is able to identify which dish is the most or least popular. This in turn provides businesses with information about their customers, which they can then use to make informed decisions about offering more of the same product or service. By combining this information with marketing techniques, businesses can increase their profits while reducing the amount of overheads.
Information systems are used as an informational equivalent of a spreadsheet or the equivalent of an index. The representation, however, must be well constructed in such a way that it allows easy access, use and manipulation. Raw data must be represented as if it were in a spreadsheet or a similar format. It should be presented to the user in such a way that he/she can manipulate it and make informed decisions about his/her data. The representation also needs to allow fast searches and retrieval.
The word “information” comes from the Latin root diagnosis and refers to “a form of communication” and “a storehouse of knowledge”. Information systems are constructed on these concepts of information. A person has in mind an information et al when he/she thinks of an entity such as an institution, a person, an idea, or a product. An informational equivalent would be a database, spreadsheet, catalogue, or catalogue of facts. Such a database would allow users to search it and get relevant information whenever they want it.
The notion of storing facts rather than facts themselves dates back to the dawn of mankind. The term “encyclopaedia” derives from the Greek work” Encyclopedia” and applies to a compilation of this sort. In the modern age, it applies to a huge amount of information, mostly stored on computers. In the context of the online scientific business, it usually refers to the vast bodies of knowledge acquired by scientists over the years. Online scientific databases are very large and can take hundreds of years to assemble. One can say of this type of a database: it is a repository.
Information theory is a set of ideas about how information is processed. Information theory was originally developed for the purposes of information processing in computer science. Theories in information processing have various definitions, but all refer to the idea that information is a transformation process between a sender and a receiver. In other words, information is something that has been transformed into some form, either in terms of the form of information that the sender/receiver gives or in terms of the form that the receiver/sender gives to the information that has been transformed. If we take our example from computer science, then information is a transformation from input to output, and information processing is the ability to transform information so as to output a desired result.
An information theory dissertation will usually employ language planning, computer science methods of instruction, programming, and the study of communication systems. The focus will be on how language systems provide information and the importance of ‘linguistic’ conventions for the meaning of expressive messages. The dissertation will not deal with all of the various grammatical forms, but will concentrate on the use of representations for representing information in various languages. This allows one to formalize the use of linguistic structures as a model for the meaning of information. It also allows one to draw up a straw vote for the meaning of any given term, which will in turn give one an objective judgment about the subject of the dissertation.