Representation of Information in a Computer


Data are raw facts that have not being processed,
Meaning is not attached to them through they are statement of facts. They are
not processed and are inactive.

Types
of Information
1.        
Pictorial
information: (symbols, pictures, graphs, diagrams, sign etc)
2.        
Textual
information: document, statement, alphabet
3.        
Numeric
or statistic information: numbers, figures etc.
Presentation
of Information
There are so many kinds of information structure,
ranging from a bit or a pixel to an enclosed or a complete library. Each type
of information we have about an entity known as patient, the attribute of that
address, date of first visit to the hospital, compliance, diagnosis, treatment
etc. The descriptions of these are values in the form of strings of text,
numbers and these will vary widely from one point to the other. For example the
corresponding value for the attribute given above may be.
Name:
Excellent Okoro I.
Date of birth: 15th March 1985
Date of first visit: 15th June 2006
Compliance: cold, body pain, catarrh, cough
Diagnosis: influenza etc.
It is easy to decide to represent a patient name;
it is another question to decide exactly how to represent the name for example
considering the name given above.
Okoro Excellent
Excellent. I .Okoro
1. Okoro  Excellent.
These are just a few of the different possibilities
of writing a name. To the human reader they are virtually identical. To a typical
computer program searching for a particular string symbol they are not
identical. Dates are another example of how complexity can come out of data
representation e.g.
January 15, 2006
15 January, 2006
January 15th 2006.
15/01/06 or 01/15/06, 06/01/15 all these dates
means the same thing. But even to the human reader there is some ambiguity
especially between the European date format (15 01 06) and the American date.
Format (01: 15:06).
Type of Information Representation
There are different types of information. It can be
in form of sentence/English grammar, tables/pictures.
a.       
Nature
language
b.       
Artificial
language
c.       
Restricted
natural language
d.       
Codes,
measures and descriptors.
Natural
Language
It is the language we naturally speak. It has not
limited to its vocabulary. Also, it has no complete set of rules to describe
its syntax or grammar. It has no complete rule guiding its usage.
Advantages
of Natural Language as Means of Communication
i.              
It is
easily understood. It can be understandable to large groups of users without
special training
ii.              
Natural
language and its users are fault tolerant
Disadvantages
1          
Lack of
conciseness.
2          
Ambiguity:
This is the possibility that a text will not yield a single meaning to all
readers
3          
The
difficulty of interpretation of text by a computer.
Artificial
Language
This is the use of computer languages. This is representing
information in highly compact and unambiguous form. This representation
simplifies the computer programmers that must interpret it. However, users have
to be trained in the use of the language are COBOL, BASIC, FORTRAN etc.
Restricted
Natural Language
This can be any sub-language for which the
vocabulary or syntax are significantly limited, yet for which the meanings
remain more or less as in natural languages.
The restricted natural language technique is use
with command languages for computer software.

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