Data

Data (/ˈdeɪtə/ DAY-tə, /ˈdætə/ DA-tə, or /ˈdɑːtə/ DAH-tə) is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables; restated, pieces of data are individual pieces of information. Data is measured, collected and reported, and analyzed, whereupon it can be visualized using graphs or images. Data as a general concept refers to the fact that some existing information or knowledge is represented or coded in some form suitable for better usage or processing.

Raw data, i.e. unprocessed data, is a collection of numbers, characters; data processing commonly occurs by stages, and the "processed data" from one stage may be considered the "raw data" of the next. Field data is raw data that is collected in an uncontrolled in situ environment. Experimental data is data that is generated within the context of a scientific investigation by observation and recording.

The Latin word "data" is the plural of "datum", and still may be used as a plural noun in this sense. Nowadays, though, "data" is most commonly used in the singular, as a mass noun (like "information", "sand" or "rain").

Data segment

In computing, a data segment (often denoted .data) is a portion of an object file or the corresponding virtual address space of a program that contains initialized static variables, that is, global variables and static local variables. The size of this segment is determined by the size of the values in the program's source code, and does not change at run time.

The data segment is read-write, since the values of variables can be altered at run time. This is in contrast to the read-only data segment (rodata segment or .rodata), which contains static constants rather than variables; it also contrasts to the code segment, also known as the text segment, which is read-only on many architectures. Uninitialized data, both variables and constants, is instead in the BSS segment.

Historically, to be able to support memory address spaces larger than the native size of the internal address register would allow, early CPUs implemented a system of segmentation whereby they would store a small set of indexes to use as offsets to certain areas. The Intel 8086 family of CPUs provided four segments: the code segment, the data segment, the stack segment and the extra segment. Each segment was placed at a specific location in memory by the software being executed and all instructions that operated on the data within those segments were performed relative to the start of that segment. This allowed a 16-bit address register, which would normally provide 64KiB (65536 bytes) of memory space, to access a 1MiB (1048576 bytes) address space.

Data (disambiguation)

Data is uninterpreted information.

Data or DATA may also refer to:

Music

Linkage

Linkage may refer to:

See also

Linkage (linguistics)

In historical linguistics, a linkage is a group of related languages that is formed when a proto-language breaks up into a network of dialects that gradually differentiates into separate languages. This term was introduced by Malcolm Ross in his study of the Western Oceanic languages (Ross 1988); it is contrasted with a family, which arises when the proto-language speech community separates into groups that are isolated from each other, rather than forming a network.

Principle

Linkages are formed when languages emerged historically from the diversification of an earlier dialect continuum: it may be that its members diverged while sharing subsequent innovations, or that such dialects came into contact and converged.In any dialect continuum, innovations are shared between neighbouring dialects in intersecting patterns; these patterns of intersecting innovations continue to be evident as the dialect continuum turns into a linkage.

According to the comparative method, a group of languages that exclusively shares a set of innovations constitutes a "(genealogical) subgroup"; thus, a linkage is usually characterised by the presence of intersecting subgroups. The tree model does not allow for the existence of intersecting subgroups, and thus it is ill-designed to represent linkages: these are better approached using the wave model.