Data

The word 'data' refers to facts concerning things such as people, objects, event etc. A list of class students' roll numbers, names, marks etc, is an example of students data. Therefore, data is defined as; collection of raw facts and figures, which is collected for specific purpose, is called data.

For example, collection of students' data may look like the following,

David          62   63  64

John            50   75  70

Kate           90   82   85

Amelia        75   80   60

The above data does not convey proper meaning, because it has no relation among given values and there is no proper labeling of data values.

Types of Data

Data can be divided into three types. These are:

1) Numeric Data.

2) Alphabetic Data.

3) Alphanumeric Data.

Numeric Data
                        It consist of digits 0 to 9 +, &, - signs and decimal points.
Alphabetic Data
                         It consist of all the alphabet letters, i.e. A to Z and a to z.
Alphanumeric Data
                               It consist of alphabetic letters, numeric digits (0-9) and some special characters such as #, $, etc.