Well, as you probably suspect, there are several ways to perform this conversion and transmission process, and that is the chapter of our discussion. DATA Data is a general term used to describe raw facts. To put it simply, data is nothing more than a collection of related elements or items, that when properly coded into some type of input medium, can be processed by a computer. Data items might include your service number, your name, your paygrade, or any other fact. When this data has been processed together with other facts, it then has meaning and it becomes information we can understand and properly use.
Symbols convey meaning only when understood.
The symbol itself is not the information, but merely a representation of it. Data must be reduced to a set of symbols that the computer can read and interpret before there can be any communication with the computer. The first computers were designed to manipulate numbers to solve arithmetic problems. But as you can see in figure 4-1, we create, use, and manipulate many other symbols to represent facts in the world in which we live. We are fortunate that early computer experts soon realized the need to manipulate nonnumerical symbols as well.