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What's the difference?

According to Microsoft Word's thesaurus (the epitome of common usage), data is synonymous with information, and information in turn is synonymous with knowledge and with wisdom. The language we use every day does not serve us well, because we cannot adequately define one term without reference to the other. There are no good, unambiguous definitions, but "data", "knowledge", "information", and "wisdom" can be thought of as forming a hierarchy. Data are the smallest symbolic units from which we build information by assigning the data a value or meaning that is greater than the sum of its parts. This process of enriching raw data with meaning is called "interpretation", and is governed by an unambiguous convention (agreement or rules). Information (which is therefore certain - but not necessarily correct, if the data are flawed) may be organised and associated with theoretical concepts or abstract ideas to generate knowledge (a personalised evidence-based belief that something is true). Knowledge is therefore dynamic because "abstraction" is not governed by an unambiguous convention but rather by a body of non-static evidence that an assertion is true (or not), and by a personal context in the mind of the individual making the abstraction. Consequently different individuals may derive different knowledge from the same information, making knowledge hard (perhaps impossible) to quantify and store—except by reducing it to information. Experience allows knowledge to be competently applied with tangible skills (expertise), but with wisdom only through the additional operation of intangible insights.

In computing terms, if a bit (binary digit, 0 or 1) equates to a datum, a string of bits represent data. They in themselves have no meaning other than in being bits. However, we can assign meanings to 7-bit strings of data to describe ASCII characters. Strings of these characters form words that symbolise something communicable—information. This information does not become knowledge until such time as it has been abstracted in a cognitive process by an intelligence.

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