data information knowledge wisdom

in my continuing quest to understand my own field, I've previously blogged about definitions of informatics. one such definition is that it is "the process of, or the study of the process of, transforming data into information." of course, this gets into tricky question about what constitutes "data" and "information," but for now I'll leave that to this rather old post.

turns out, some folks have argued that this data-to-information process is only one step in a larger trajectory. generally this goes somethings like the following (partially cribbed from the DIKW Wikipedia article, partially from an alternative hierarchy, and partially my synopsis/interpretation):

data - representations of direct observations of the world.
information - data assembled to answer specific "who," "what," "when," and "where" style questions. I might call this, "data made meaningful."
knowledge - the application of information for the accomplishment of a specific purpose, answers "how" questions. I might call this, "data and information made useful."
wisdom - understanding the significance and value of knowledge, answers "why" questions. I might call this, "data, information, and knowledge made valuable."

now, I don't think this is a particularly good categorization of how the world works, or how we work in the world. the Wikipedia article linked above has some pretty good discussion about how these various terms (data, information, knowledge, wisdom, etc.) might be so ambiguous, or polysemous, as to be not particularly useful. however, I think these sorts of hierarchies and typologies are interesting from a rhetorical/critical standpoint, as a way of understanding how different groups of people talk about and thinking about such topics as information and understanding.

this interlude was prompted by the ever-provocative Virtual Politik. now, back to work (in this case, grant writing).

what is informatics? grad student party definitions

a recent CACM article describes why someone might want a degree in informatics. having a degree from an informatics department myself (though my degree is technically in Information and Computer Sciences), I thought the article did a pretty good job of describing what informatics is and why it's a valuable field.

it also reminded me of a discussion on a departmental mailing list a while back. someone asked for a "party definition of informatics," that is, "What is your best definition, to be given at social occasions such as parties, of what Informatics is?" this sparked some pretty standard and some really fabulous responses, which I want to quote below (these are all anonymized--if anyone wants to claim credit for one of these, let me know; or if you want your definition removed, I can do that, too).

"People ask me if I work on the hardware or software side of computing. I tell them I work on the sociology side of computing."

"The process of transforming Data into Information"

"Sometimes I do strange things with computers. Sometimes I watch other people do strange things with computers."

"I usually start by saying that 'Informatics' is a silly word that gives almost no insight into what the field is actually about and just serves to confuse people.... Then I say something useful ;)"

"Computer Science with a heart!!"

"I think that is what makes the difference between HCI, ubicomp, SE and the rest of disciplines in computer science."

"Informatics, the softer side of ICS."

"I say that I study how technology is shaped by culture and how culture shapes technology. And sometimes, if so inclined, I mention that this is important to understand for technology design."

there you have it, a zeitgeist of what informatics is from a bunch of informatics grad students.

iSchool dissertations and rigor

I was following this discussion at UW's iSchool, and the previous week's, on what constitutes an information science dissertation, and I found the (posted) results of this panel rather interesting. they list a series of pragmatic suggestions from students, the first and most important being to "satisfy yourself first," followed by a list of expectations from professors. One striking expectation from the professors is that the dissertation be "rigorous." I suspect it is no coincidence that this expectation is followed by being able to justify a qualitative dissertation to a quantitative researcher and vice versa. While we can all agree that research should be rigorous, what actually constitutes rigor seems to vary, at times greatly, and not just along quant/qual lines. The faculty in the department at my school seem similar to UW: folks from different disciplines coming together due to common interests. This leads to different definitions of what counts as rigorous, sort of a panoply of perspectives from which to choose the best fit for your particular problem.

I'm wondering, though, as iSchools begin to graduate students, what will the field of information science consider rigorous? will it maintain this panoply approach? will certain approaches get canonized and others become discredited? will we generate new approaches distinct to iSchool-type problems? what are the potential ramifications if these methods get picked up and transfered to other fields? when and how might such new methods be considered rigorous, both in info sci and in other disciplines?

an etymological interlude

so, the academic unit where I'm doing my Ph.D. is called the Department of Informatics. I'd never really thought about it until a little while ago, but what do you call someone who does informatics? biology is practices by biologists, chemistry by chemists, mathematics by mathematicians, statistics by statisticians, therapy by therapists, etc. so, what does one call a practitioner of informatics? I think there are two distinct possibilities:

informatician

informaticist

this quandry was started when David Kay, for whom I was TAing last quarter, used the former term. it threw me off guard, as it took me a moment to parse it. after having done so, I thought, how cumbersome. first, how does one pronounce that? he said it with a small emphasis on the first syllable and a large emphasis on the fourth, the same emphatic pattern as mathematician. this isn't too bad, but it ends up making the "o" pronounced with that soft vowel sound denoted by an up-side-down "e," which I think masks the root word "information." I think the latter alternative, with an an emphasis only on the third syllable, is easier to pronounce, is clearer about the proper pronounciation, and pays clearer homage to the root word.

when I started thinking about that, I said, hm, I wonder what the etymology of information is. turns out it's from a participial form of the Latin informare (which is actually the origin of "inform," the root for "information"), meaning to form into, implicitly to form into a shape. I thought this was particularly striking, especially when one considers the way that one interpretation of informatics, according to Bill, is "the process of transforming data into information." the etymology would seem to indicate not only that informatics could refer to the process of informing, but also the study of that process. interesting indeed.

however, this gets us no closer to the goal of determining the proper form of the word to refer to one who practices informatics. so, I looked into the two suffixes, -ist and -ian. on first glance, it seems that -ist is more appropriate; "one that performs a specialized action ... a specialist in a specified art, science, or skill," as opposed to "one relating to, belonging to, or resembling." dig a little further into the etymology. -ist is from the Latin noun-forming suffix -ista, -istes, which is from the Greek agent noun suffix -istEs, and I believe an agent noun is exactly what we're trying to form. -ian, on the other hand, is from the Latin -ianus, meaning of or belonging to, hence noun forms like "Bostonian" or "Washingtonian." however, -ianus was, it seems (see the third bullet point under that link), used to refer to the original family name of an adopted person, quite literally indicating from whom they had come and to whom they belonged. why, then, do mathematician, statistician, physician, and a number of others use the -ian (or its derivative, -ician) suffix? it could be that these are fields to which one can belong or from which one can come, in a way that fields that get the -ist suffix are less focused on being a well-defined group and more focused on the object of study. in this way, it would be appropriate to say that someone was from mathematics, but not that someone was from physics. however, I suspect that this is far more likely an etymological artifact than as aspect that carries great amounts of meaning.

given all these considerations, I think that "inforamiticist" is a much more appropriate, if not accurate, form of the word. what do you think, which form do you prefer? or would you possibly suggest an alternate formation?