The myth of useless information

We are told that we live in an Information Age. If we do, though, we are remarkably uninformed. In fact, most people don’t know what information is. They routinely confuse it with data. Collecting data is described as collecting information, for example.

People noticed that researchers collect data and extract information from it, so they concluded that if they collected data, they’d be able to extract information from it, too. However, they might as well think that since Wayne Gretzky won the National Hockey League scoring championship by putting on some skates and carrying a hockey stick, they can win the NHL scoring championship if they also put on some skates and pick up a hockey stick.

Here is a simple example that illustrates the difference between data and information. A few years ago I was out of town on business. I had never been to the city I was visiting before, so I bought a map of it. The map had been published as recently as three years before, but failed to show a major street that, I was informed, had been opened five years or so before that. The street was the street on which my clients had their office.

To become information, data must at the very least be accurate and relevant. My map failed on both counts. If information is not accurate, it cannot be relevant. Obviously, if a city map does not contain a major street it cannot be valid. A map of London that omitted Trafalgar Square would simply not be a map of London.

Even if information is accurate, though, it need not be relevant. An accurate map of Detroit is not relevant to you if you are trying to find your way around Minneapolis. That point may seem irrelevant itself, but too often people trying to interpret data are performing the equivalent of trying to find their way around Minneapolis with a map of Disneyland.

For example, people often assume that opinions and other ideas predict behaviour, so that instead of observing the behaviour of the people they are interested in understanding, they need only collect their ideas. This assumption is often wrong. For example, students' educational aspirations often are unrelated to how far they end up going in school.

In general:

1. If you need to know what the capital of Ontario is, and you consult an encyclopedia that tells you the capital of Ontario is Toronto, the encyclopedia is informative (since Toronto is, in fact, the capital of Ontario).
   
2. If you need to know what the capital of Ontario is, and you consult a different encyclopedia that tells you the capital is Ottawa, that encyclopedia is not informative (Ottawa is the capital of Canada, but not of Ontario).
   
3. If you don’t need to know what the capital of Ontario is, then neither encyclopedia is informative, since you’re not going to be consulting either one. An aspirin you don’t take won’t make your headache go away.

Information is conventionally defined as data that reduce uncertainty, and the preceding three rules are consistent with this definition:

1. If you’re uncertain about where the capital city of Toronto is, then an encyclopedia that tells you the capital is Toronto has reduced your uncertainty to zero – you know what the capital is.
   
2. An encyclopedia that tells you the capital is Ottawa hasn’t reduced your uncertainty at all, even though you may think it has.
   
3. And if the question of the capital of Ontario is of no interest to you (because, for example, you already know what it is, or you don’t need to know what it is)), you’re not going to consult either encyclopedia, so neither of them will reduce your uncertainty about where Toronto is.

What these observations boil down to is a definition of information as:

1. necessary,
   
2. accurate, and
   
3. intelligible.

Data may be unnecessary for two reasons:

1. you have no reason to consult them, or
   
2. they tell you nothing about the subject you’re interested in.

Consequently, if data are not accurate they are not necessary, either. If you want to know who won the hockey game last night you don’t ask someone to guess who won. Instead you go to a reliable source. Even accurate data are unnecessary, though, if you don’t need to know them. If you’re not a hockey fan, you don’t subscribe to the Hockey News.

There is no such thing as useless information.

The Myth of Useless Information © John FitzGerald, 2008