Opinion and commentary

Data is often referred to as the ‘oil’ of the 21st century. The vast volume of data continually being generated is described as Big Data. Oil needs to be refined before yielding products of economic value. Similarly, data is a resource which must be processed to yield information of value. Information is ‘processed, organised and structured data’. Analysis of information yields patterns, which may be defined as a ‘regularity in the world, a design repletion in a predictable manner’. And patterns, in turn, lead to insights about the phenomenon under study. From insights comes knowledge which is the end product of the greatest value.