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Data, information, knowledge: An information science analysis

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

Published online on

Abstract

I analyze the text of an article that appeared in this journal in 2007 that published the results of a questionnaire in which a number of experts were asked to define the concepts of data, information, and knowledge. I apply standard information retrieval techniques to build a list of the most frequent terms in each set of definitions. I then apply information extraction techniques to analyze how the top terms are used in the definitions. As a result, I draw data‐driven conclusions about the aggregate opinion of the experts. I contrast this with the original analysis of the data to provide readers with an alternative viewpoint on what the data tell us.