Quiz: Data Meanings

Let's think about the meaning of data as distinct from its type. Here are four pieces of data. All of them have the same type. They are all strings.

除了 data type 外，我們也需要思考字串的意義，這裏有四個字串，但是有一個跟其他不同類型。請問是哪一個？

But which one does not have the same kind of meaning as the others?

So, Jones, Tanaka and Muller are all family names. I got them from databases of common family names in different countries. But Mary J. Washington isn't a family name, it's a person's full name.

Mary J. Washington 是一個人的全名，其他三個都是不同地區的常見姓氏。

So here we've seen that when we think about pieces of data that might be in a database, we have to think not only their type but also their meaning what they represent in real world.

資料裡的資料很多，我們不但要想他們 data type，也要思考在現實生活中代表的意義。