3. Sources of Data

Data is gathered by many methods, but the most common are:

	You gather it yourself i.e. it is original data.
	You get it from someone  else i.e. indirect data.
	You work on some original data and generate a new set from it.
	Archives.

Original source

Collected as part of a transaction in a shop e.g. credit card number
Collected in a survey e.g. face to face interview, telephone interview, questionnaire.  Results are often recorded on an OMR form
Collected from sensors e.g. weather station records wind speed and humidity, traffic sensors record the number of cars

 

Indirect source An indirect source is where data is now used for a purpose other than that for which it was originally collected.

Example:

The customer has supplied details of her credit card number to the shop.  The main use of this data is to allow payment to be made.

But this data can be combined with data on the item actually purchased - now this new data set can be used to guide managers on their customers' buying habits.

N.B. Organisations that wish to use data for secondary purposes are restricted in what they can do by The Data Protection Act,

This is an example of an INDIRECT SOURCE.

 

By-Product of processing

Sometimes it is much more useful to look for patterns and relationships in the data, rather than use the raw data itself.

For example consider this data from a Bakery:

Number of loaves at the start of the day
134 loaves
Number of loaves at the end of the day
10 loaves

This is the RAW data - but what the baker really wants to know is how many loaves were sold i.e. the data needs to be PROCESSED to provide new data.

Loaves sold = 134 - 10 = 124

This is an example of new data produced by the processing of source data.

 

Archive

You never know when data might be needed in the future, and so people make efforts to keep the data safe in an ARCHIVE. Did you know that the ancient Chinese kept records of things happening in the sky and this data has been used by modern scientists to pinpoint when a supernova exploded thousands of years ago! (Supernova are the largest explosions in the Universe).

Data which is not used frequently and has been placed in an archive e.g. pupils who have left school have their records archived in case an employer ever requires a reference.