Datum, Data

Datum, Data in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Datum, Data in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Datum, Data may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. A datum (singular of data) may be considered to be a single fact or item of evidence. To be informative, a datum needs one or more additional data of different sorts to provide context. Thus it can be said that a message (potential information) needs at least two data. A set of numerical data, such as 70, 90, 28, 64, is meaningless unless some explanation is provided. Do these data refer to temperatures? sport scores? or what? Similarly, a simple datum regarding color, such as red, carries much more meaning when it is combined with at least one more datum, such as chair. Data are often presented in tables, along with explanations, e.g., average temperatures by month and place or the scores of yesterdays football games. Because Information Retrieval databases focus on messages, they rarely deal with raw data except in the context of messages, where data are placed in context. See also knowledge.