What is a fact?

We explain that it is a data in computing and what are the types of data that exist. In addition, examples and what is information.

1. What is a fact?

In computer science , the data are symbolic representations (that is: numerical, alphabetic, algorithmic, etc.) of a certain qualitative or quantitative attribute or variable, that is: the coded description of an empirical fact , an event, an entity.

The data is, thus, the information (values ​​or references) that the computer receives through different means, and that is manipulated through the processing of the programming algorithms . Its content can be virtually any : statistics, numbers, descriptors, which separately have no relevance to system users , but which together can be interpreted to obtain complete and specific information.

In programming languages , used to create and organize the algorithms that every computer or computer system pursues, data is the expression of the specific characteristics of the entities on which these algorithms operate. That is, they are the initial input, from which the information can be processed and composed.

They are particularly important for the structure of data, a branch of computing that studies the particular way of storing information in minimal portions to achieve a subsequent efficient recovery.

2. Type of data

In computer science, when we talk about data types (or simply “type”) we refer to an attribute that is indicated to the computer regarding the nature of the data that is to be processed. This includes defining or restricting the data, defining the values ​​that can be taken, what operations can be performed with them, etc.

Some types of data are:

• Characters . Individual digits that can be represented by numerical data (0-9), letters (az) or other symbols.
• Unicode characters . Unicode is an encoding standard that allows data to be represented more efficiently, thus allowing up to 65535 different characters.
• Numeric . They can be real numbers or integers, depending on what is necessary.
• Booleans . They represent logical values ​​(true or false).

3. Data examples

Some examples of computer data may be those that make up the hierarchy of computer data, in an ascending pyramid from the most basic to the most complex:

• Bits . Each entry of the binary code language, that is, 1 or 0.
• Characters . Numbers, letters or special characters, each formed from a combination of bits . For example: the decimal number 99 corresponds to 1100011 in binary.
• Fields . Orderly set of characters, for example a word, such as the name and / or last name of the user who fills an online form.
• Records . Sets of ordered fields, such as those necessary to log in to our email.
• Files . Orderly sets of records, such as the cookies that the web pages keep in our system and contain the information of the sessions that we have started.

4. Information (in computer science)

In computer science, information is understood as the set of data ordered, sequenced, processed by a programming algorithm , which allows a reference to be recomposed, as a concrete fact or some real meaning.

The retrieval of information from packets or data sets is thus the ultimate goal of computing, since computer systems encode and represent information through different mechanisms and languages ​​that allow them to communicate with each other in a way Fast and efficient.