Individual Assignment

Title: Data Organization and Information Management in Daily Life

Overview

This assignment is designed to help the students understand the importance of data, information, and knowledge management by organizing and presenting data from daily life. Students will learn how to organize raw data into meaningful information and gain insights (knowledge) through visualization.

Assignment Tasks and Instruction

1. Choose a Personal Data Set

Select a simple data set from your daily life. Below are a few examples, but feel free to choose any other data set that you can easily track and organize:

• Personal expenses over the last month (e.g., groceries, entertainment, utilities, etc.)
• Health or workout tracking data (e.g., steps taken, calories burned, workout duration)
• Time spent on various activities (e.g., studying, leisure, social media, exercise, etc.)
• Movie or book collection (e.g., titles, genres, personal ratings)
• Comparison of favorite online stores/products (e.g., product prices, features, reviews)

2. Organize the Data

• Use a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to organize the data.
• Create appropriate columns/fields that are relevant to your data. Examples of fields/columns include:
  • Date
  • Category (e.g., type of expense, activity type, etc.)
  • Amount (e.g., money spent, calories burned, time spent)
  • Item name (for product comparison or collections)

For example, if you are tracking personal expenses, you may include columns like Date, Expense Category, Amount Spent, Payment Method, and Notes.

3. Visual Representation

Once your data is organized in the spreadsheet, create a simple dashboard or summary by using basic charts to visualize the data. You can use:

• Pie charts to show percentage breakdowns (e.g., percentage of total expenses by category)
• Bar graphs to show trends (e.g., weekly exercise performance, time spent on activities)
• Line charts to show progress (e.g., tracking spending habits or workout performance over time)
• Ensure that your charts are labelled clearly and easy to understand.

4. Write a comprehensive reflection report (maximum of 2 pages, without charts/graphs)

After organizing and visualizing your data, write a short comprehensive report on the following points:

How did organizing and visualizing your data help you better understand it

• Explain what insights you gained from your data (e.g., where you spent the most money, trends in your workout routine, etc.)

How can the process of turning data into information help you make better decisions in daily life?

• Reflect on how the visualization helped you see patterns or trends you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

Data, Information, and Knowledge:

• Briefly explain the difference between data, information, and knowledge.
• How did your raw data turn into information, and what knowledge did you gain from it? (For example, data is the raw facts you collected, information is the summary you made using charts, and knowledge is the insight you gained for better decision-making).

How could these skills be applied in professional contexts?

• Reflect on how organizing, analyzing, and visualizing data is useful in a business setting (e.g., managing sales data, analyzing employee performance, or tracking customer preferences)

Submission Instructions

• Spreadsheet: Submit your organized spreadsheet with the data and the visualizations (charts or graphs).
• Reflection report: Submit a comprehensive reflection report (maximum 2 pages) in a separate document (Word or PDF format).