Data
Also called: Datum · Topic: Geographical Data: Sources, Compilation and Processing · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 1 "Data - Its Source and Compilation"
Meaning
Data are numbers that stand for measurements of the real world, such as the amount of rain at a place or the distance between two cities. A datum is one single measurement. Data on their own are only figures. They become useful when they are sorted and worked on to answer a question. Geographers need data because many features, like rainfall, crops and population, act on each other, and numbers describe them best.
Example
A record of 20 cm of rain in Barmer, in the dry west of Rajasthan, is a datum. Another is the 1,385 km rail distance from Delhi to Mumbai via Kota and Vadodara. The route via Itarsi and Manmad is 1,542 km.
Don't confuse with
- Information: data are the raw measurements. Information is the meaningful answer you get after processing those measurements.