Replying to LO30968 --
Yes, indeed. This is SO often overlooked! So many believe one can
overlook a 'data dictionary' when designing an information system, for
example. Understanding semantics prevents a data system from becoming
a 'Tower of Babel'.
I once had an occasion to have a conversation about 'Admit_Term' with
a colleague. Is it the admit term of a prospective student, an
admitted student, an enrolled student? Even after an hour he really
couldn't see that they aren't the same and that none of them are
necessarily 'the first term a student is admitted to the university'
which is what he wished to use as a definition.
Admit term 1<>admit term 2<>admit term 3<>.... etc.
When analyzing data into information it is so important to understand
what it is saying.
Judy
Sr. Mgmt Analyst
> 1. Data are linguistic expressions that we create which make claims
>about the world, and I do not accept your premise that we would
>necessarily mutually agree on what they say. And that is why we
>should recognize them as nothing more than claims, about which good
>people sometimes, if not often, disagree. Your description of data,
>by contrast, seems to call for us to rally around the notion that some
>claims can be certain, and I simply will not do that. And if that's
>what Argyris was saying, I disagree with him too.
....
>
> 3. Then you speak further of the difference Argyris alleges between
>data and his three claim-types. But since I have explained that data
>ARE claims, the distinction you speak is overdrawn. I cannot see how
>one can separate data from its semantic content, since data is a claim
>that SAYS something. And if it was Argyris's intention to prop up
>this distinction by relying upon the immutable truth of what he calls
>data, then I say again as I did above that such 'foundationalist'
>notions of knowledge are arguably false, and all data is fallible and
>subject to error, since all data merely expresses someone's
>descriptive assertions about the world. So there is no such data with
>certainty.
--"Judith Kyrala" <jkyrala@msn.com>
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