Traducción

Traducción Tema 1.2

As observed above, a vast amount of data has been accumulated within the information systems of public and private organizations. These data originate partly from internal transactions of an administrative, logistical and commercial nature and partly from external sources. However, even if they have been gathered and stored in a systematic and structured way, these datacannot be used directly for decision-making purposes. They need to be processed by means of appropriate extraction tools and analytical methods capable of transforming them into information and knowledge that can be subsequently used by decision makers.The difference between data, information and knowledge can be better understood through the following remarks. Como se observó anteriormente, una grancantidad de datos se ha acumulado dentro de la los sistemas de información de las organizaciones públicas y privadas. Estos datos procedenen parte de las transacciones internas de carácter administrativo, logístico y comercial naturaleza y en parte de fuentes externas. Sin embargo, incluso si han sido recogida y almacenada de forma sistemática y estructurada, estos datos no pueden ser usadodirectamente para propósitos de toma de decisiones. Tienen que ser procesados por medio de herramientas de extracción y métodos adecuados de análisis capaces de transformándolos en información y conocimiento que puede ser posteriormente utilizada por los tomadores de decisiones. La diferencia entre los datos, la información y el conocimiento puede ser mejor entendidas por medio de las siguientesobservaciones.

Data. Generally, data represent a structured codification of single primary entities, as well as of transactions involving two or more primary entities. For example, for a retailer data refer to primary entities such as customers, points of sale and items, while sales receipts represent the commercial transactions. Datos. En general, los datos representan una codificación estructuradade entidades individuales primarios, así como de las transacciones que impliquen a dos o más entidades primarias. Para ejemplo, para unos datos de minoristas se refieren a entidades primarias, tales como clientes, puntos de venta y los artículos, mientras que los ingresos de ventas representan las transacciones comerciales.

Information. Information is the outcome of extraction and processingactivities carried out on data, and it appears meaningful for those who receive it in a specific domain. For example, to the sales manager of a retail company, the proportion of sales receipts in the amount of over ¤100 per week, or the number of customers

holding a loyalty card who have reduced by more than 50% the monthly amount spent in the last three months, represent meaningful pieces ofinformation that can be extracted from raw stored data. Knowledge. Information is transformed into knowledge when it is used to make decisions and develop the corresponding actions. Therefore, we can think of knowledge as consisting of information put to work into a specific domain, enhanced by the experience and competence of decision makers in tackling and solving complex problems. For a retailcompany, a sales analysis may detect that a group of customers, living in an area where a competitor has recently opened a new point of sale, have reduced their usual amount of business. The knowledge extracted in this way will eventually lead to actions aimed at solving the problem detected, for example by introducing a new free home delivery service for the customers residing in that specificarea. We wish to point out that knowledge can be extracted from data both in a passive way, through the analysis criteria suggested by the decision makers, or through the active application of mathematical models, in the form of inductive learning or optimization, as described in the following chapters. Several public and private enterprises and organizations have developed in recent years formal...