Extracting Information and Data

Learning Objective: Describe what information can be extracted from data

DAT-2.A.1

Information is the collection of facts and

patterns extracted from data.

DAT-2.A.2

Data provide opportunities for identifying

trends, making connections, and addressing

problems.

DAT-2.A.3

Digitally processed data may show correlation

between variables. A correlation found in data

does not necessarily indicate that a causal

relationship exists. Additional research is

needed to understand the exact nature of

the relationship.

DAT-2.A.4

Often, a single source does not contain the

data needed to draw a conclusion. It may be

necessary to combine data from a variety of

sources to formulate a conclusion.

Learning Objective: Describe what information can be extracted from

metadata. 

DAT-2.B.1

Metadata are data about data. For example,

the piece of data may be an image, while the

metadata may include the date of creation or

the file size of the image.

DAT-2.B.2

Changes and deletions made to metadata do

not change the primary data.

DAT-2.B.3

Metadata are used for finding, organizing, and

managing information.

DAT-2.B.4

Metadata can increase the effective use of

data or data sets by providing additional

information.

DAT-2.B.5

Metadata allow data to be structured and

organized.

Learning Objective: Identify the challenges associated with processing

data. 

DAT-2.C.1

The ability to process data depends on the

capabilities of the users and their tools.

DAT-2.C.2

Data sets pose challenges regardless of size,

such as:

• the need to clean data

• incomplete data

• invalid data

• the need to combine data sources

DAT-2.C.3

Depending on how data were collected, they

may not be uniform. For example, if users enter

data into an open field, the way they choose to

abbreviate, spell, or capitalize something may

vary from user to user.

DAT-2.C.4

Cleaning data is a process that makes the data

uniform without changing their meaning (e.g.,

replacing all equivalent abbreviations, spellings,

and capitalizations with the same word).

DAT-2.C.5

Problems of bias are often created by the type

or source of data being collected. Bias is not

eliminated by simply collecting more data.