chapter 3.4: notes and activities

Information: Data that is processed to give it some meaning
Data: Can be given meaning if put into context
Knowledge: Processing information and interpreting it produces knowledge

You might need to gather knowledge to help with a decision, make reccomendations or give yourself better knowledge.

You need to consider what relevant knowledge you already have. You need to try and work out the rules governing the model, and this turns information into knowledge.

It is important to strike a balance between too much knowledge and too little.


Activity. (missing information, how vital is it? how easy can find out?)
Price of materials needed, vital, very easy
Hours worked at night, important, easy
Charge to the customer, vital, easy
Profits made, important, easy

You need to deal with missing information using a strategy. Write down the information thats missing. Then decide how important that item is to your model. Ask the questions;
Can the model work without it?
Does it make a significant difference to the decision you have to make?
How big of a difference would it make?
Then try to find out how easy it is to find out the information; you don't want to waste time.

Make a list where information is to be found. You can make diagrams, tables or bullet point lists.

Before searching for additional information you should establish clear objectives and the extent of existing information.

Sources of information need to be assessed for reliability. Ask yourself if the information is:

accurate?
relevant?
complete?
detailed enough?

Remember GarbageIn,GarbageOut (GIGO). If the data is wrong then your end results will be wrong.

Understanding a Situation

A recurring decision; the decision needs to be made repeatedly, maybe over a fixed time.

A non-recurring decision; the decision is a one off, start with new resources.

Before handling a situation you should write down the most important aspects described to you. For example, looking at the company Livewire.

1. The computer installs computer cables.
2. It uses a system based on the number of sockets required.
3. It charges a fixed cost for each point.
4. The market is competitive and it is important to get the right balance for profit.
5. They want a new system that charges according to the materials used and time taken to complete.
6. Profits are lower than for others.

You must consider all viewpoints. After looking at the file LivewiresStart.xls I think there are a few more cells needed. 'Time taken to visit the site', 'problems and challenges' would also be useful as it encorporates what the staff wanted.

I believe that the rates paid to the engineers is fairly important. They will think it only fair that if the company has increased profit that they get better wages, and they are an essential part of the company. It is only fair that they should earn more at night than day.

I do think the model could be adapted to take this into consideration. For example, there could be two seperate fields to calculate hours worked at night and hours worked at day, before adding them together to give us the total cost of labour.

Improvements to unit 1 & 2

Improvements;

Unit 1.
• Check all pages of eBook to ensure that they are all completed
• Make mini evaluations for each online service; clear, balanced picture
• Make mini evaluation of the internet so far; what you can do and what limitations there are
• Reduce the larger pictures to smaller JPEG files and reinsert them
• Three more aspects of how IT is affecting people’s lives
• A paragraph on the benefits and drawbacks of the Information Age overall, and life in the Information Age
• On the digital divide page: Examples of current situation globally and locally, (especially globally)
• Have a small paragraph as an introduction to the website saying ‘in 100 years time, I understand that our internet may seem basic to you...’ etc
• Smaller font size
• Links up/down pages to reduce scrolling, or separate pages
• Do an evaluation of the eBook as a whole

Unit 2.
• More evaluation on the sites overall effectiveness, giving ways of how it could be improved
• Finish database work; reports –trends, advice for company
• Evaluation; See list posted on blogger

Evaluation exemplar

Evaluation guidelines y12: Database coursework Unit 2:
Things to mention:
1. Are there suitable primary keys in the tables? Could either table be improved with
the addition of extra primary keys?
2. Did the relationship you created work well in the database?
3. Would an extra table improve the database eg an orders table? Why?
4. Comment from at least one 3rd party about the tables and if they found them usable.
5. Are the field sizes suitable?
6. Are the field types suitable?
7. Does the validation do an effective job?
8. Could you add extra validation?
9. Did the database perform effectively? Was it fast to use?
10. Are the queries and reports logical and easy to follow?
11. Did the queries extract the data that you needed for the business? How?
12. Where your recommendations that you made relevant to the business? Would they
be useful?
13. Comment from at least one 3rd party about the reports and if they found them
usable.
14. Would any other data be useful in the database eg Cd price? Why?
15. What feedback did you get from the teacher, write down any comments you have had
and explain how they relate to your work.
16. How did you work on the task, did you work effectively or were you hampered by any
factors, eg laziness, distractions, problems, crashes?
17. How well did you present the work, could the coursework be presented in a better
way?
18. What personal improvements can you put into place for the future?