DATA
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| DATA | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Name | Data |
| Type | Concept |
| Field | Information science |
| Introduced | Antiquity |
DATA Data are discrete units of information used for analysis, decision-making, and communication. They underpin activities in Silicon Valley, Wall Street, United Nations, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and European Union institutions, and are central to projects at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Oxford, Harvard University, and Tsinghua University. Major historical efforts involving numerical and textual records include initiatives by the Roman Empire, Ming dynasty, Ottoman Empire, British Empire, and French Republic.
Definition and Types
Scholars at Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Google, and Microsoft Research classify entries as qualitative, quantitative, structured, unstructured, and semi-structured across platforms like Relational database, NoSQL, Hadoop, Spark, and TensorFlow. Industry standards from International Organization for Standardization and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers inform formats such as CSV, JSON, XML, and Parquet used by teams at Amazon Web Services, Oracle Corporation, SAP SE, Salesforce, and Cisco Systems. Historical artifact compilation by Library of Congress, British Library, and Bibliothèque nationale de France contrasts with sensor feeds from European Space Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CERN, Large Hadron Collider, and International Space Station.
Data Collection and Sources
Collection methods trace to census efforts like the Domesday Book, the First Fleet census, and modern surveys by Pew Research Center, Gallup, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Fieldwork practices used by teams from Smithsonian Institution, Natural History Museum, London, National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and World Health Organization gather observational, experimental, administrative, and transactional inputs. Remote sensing and telemetry provided by Landsat program, Copernicus Programme, Global Positioning System, Hubble Space Telescope, and Jason missions supply geospatial and temporal records integrated with corporate logs from Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, Visa Inc., and Mastercard.
Data Storage and Management
Enterprise architectures implemented by Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, Amazon S3, and Dropbox rely on file systems and object stores, replication strategies inspired by Google File System and Ceph, and database engines like PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Redis. Archival norms referenced by National Archives and Records Administration, UNESCO, and International Council on Archives guide cold storage on magnetic tape, optical media, and solid-state arrays. Data lifecycle policies shaped by regulations from European Commission, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Financial Conduct Authority, Federal Trade Commission, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act affect retention, provenance, and audit practices.
Data Processing and Analysis
Analytical toolchains developed at IBM Watson, DeepMind, OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Intel Corporation implement statistical models, machine learning, and deep learning frameworks informed by work from Johns Hopkins University, California Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University. Techniques such as regression, classification, clustering, and natural language processing draw on algorithms from Ada Lovelace Institute, Alan Turing Institute, Kaggle competitions, ImageNet challenge, and NIST benchmarks. Visualization platforms from Tableau Software, D3.js, Power BI, Matplotlib, and ggplot2 present outputs for stakeholders including teams at UNICEF, World Health Organization, Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Data Quality and Governance
Quality frameworks promoted by ISO/IEC, Data Management Association International, Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies, Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and Sarbanes-Oxley Act emphasize accuracy, completeness, consistency, timeliness, and validity. Governance programs at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, and BlackRock create stewardship roles, metadata catalogs, lineage tracking, and master data management interoperable with standards from World Wide Web Consortium, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and Open Geospatial Consortium.
Privacy, Security, and Ethics
Privacy frameworks influenced by rulings from the European Court of Justice, legislation such as the General Data Protection Regulation, California Consumer Privacy Act, and authority actions by the Federal Trade Commission intersect with security protocols from National Institute of Standards and Technology, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, European Agency for Cybersecurity, Interpol, and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ethical debates involve commissions and think tanks like Council of Europe, Ada Lovelace Institute, Berkman Klein Center, Future of Privacy Forum, and Electronic Frontier Foundation addressing consent, bias, surveillance, and algorithmic accountability in deployments by Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Applications and Impact
Practical applications span sectors served by Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, Boeing, Airbus, Toyota, General Motors, Siemens, Tesla, Inc., and SpaceX where analytics inform research, operations, and strategy. Societal impacts are debated in contexts involving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, disaster response coordinated with International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, urban planning in Singapore, Songdo, New York City, and London, and scholarly discourse at venues like NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, AAAS, and Royal Society.