Computer Data

You have already seen that, to a computer, data is any piece of information or fact that, taken by itself, may not make sense to a person. For example, you might think of the letters of the alphabet as data. Taken individually, they do not mean a lot. But when grouped into words and sentences, they make sense; that is, they become information (see Fig. 1). Similarly, basic geometric shapes may not have much meaning by themselves, but when they are grouped into a blueprint or a chart, they become useful information. In particular, the working of any computer system mainly includes the following steps: Accept data by users through input devices, such as mouse, keyboard, scanner, etc. Accepted data is transferred to temporary memory and then sent for processing through a microprocessor (or CPU) as per given instructions. But the resemblance ends there. You can think of the difference between data and programs this way: Within the computer, data is organized into files. Although many people think of documents simply as text, a computer document can include many kinds of data. For example, a computer document can be a text file (such as a letter), a group of numbers (such as a budget), a video clip (which includes images and sounds), or any combination of these items. Programs are organized into files as well; these files contain the instructions and data that a program needs in order to run and perform tasks.