}]]}]}]}] 2f:T6746,

### 1.0 Objectives - Understand difficulties in developing operational frameworks for measuring information and informational objects. - Grasp measurement features and techniques for various entities and phenomena. - Know the notion of Informativeness and its application to user-text interaction and database evaluation. ### 1.1 Introduction to Measurement - **Lord Kelvin's Insight:** "through measurement to knowledge." Measurements yield numerical values, crucial for human communication and knowledge systems. - **Simplest Form: Counting:** Applies to discrete, independent objects (e.g., 543 books, 20 lacs 92 thousand 5 hundred unemployed persons). - **Challenges:** Many entities (water, electricity, performance, information) are not in discrete unitary form and cannot be counted directly. - **Indirect Measurement:** For non-discrete items, properties like volume, weight, density, viscosity are measured (e.g., 2 liters of water, 200 grams of water). - **Intangible Measurement:** For concepts like knowledge or understanding, physical devices are insufficient. Mostly conceptual setups and logical processes are used. ### 1.2 Information Revisited - **Problem:** No universally accepted scales/devices for information measurement till AD 2000. Need to understand information's nature and parameters. - **Information Definition:** Information means different things to different people but is accepted as a basic entity. It relates to knowledge, wisdom, and data. #### 1.2.1 Status of Information - **Pervasiveness:** Information is everywhere, similar to energy or gravitation, yet subtler. - **Definition Challenge:** No workable general definition applicable to all types of information processes (multimedia, books, messages). - **Scientific Soundness:** Unlike matter or energy, information lacks an unambiguous, literal description and mathematical relations in a scientific sense. #### 1.2.2 Three Attitudes toward Information 1. **Human Context:** Information is relevant only in human cognition and communication; no "physics of information." 2. **Organization/Orientation:** Information expresses organization or orientation of elements in a set; indicates change in pattern. 3. **Action-Oriented:** Information is considered in terms of response to a stimulus; gives an idea of system activity. #### 1.2.3 Information in Discourse - **Deer's Requirements:** For information to be defined, it must: - Be a representation (abstract and meaningful). - Consist of made determinations. - Be made of certain objects. #### 1.2.4 Defining Information - **Belkin (1978):** Information as the 'structure' of any text, changing recipient's image structure. - **Mackay (1969):** Information does logical work on system organization. - **Brookes' Definition (Modified):** Information is an entity manifesting communicable knowledge, reducing uncertainty, and switching action/pattern of a system. Semantic in essence, shared meaning is crucial. - **Conditions for Information:** - Communication (material system, human beings as generator/receiver/preserver) is necessary. - Information processes are embedded in energetic processes (energy change occurs), but no direct linear relationship between energy and information amount. #### 1.2.5 Informetrics and Information Measurement - **Informetrics:** Quantitative (and qualitative) accounting of information processes; includes bibliometrics. - **Bibliometrics:** Understanding knowledge diffusion, growth/decay of subject fields, author productivity through word counts, journal rankings, bibliographic references, theorem counts. - **Implicit Hypothesis:** Counted items are linearly related to cognitive kno