data item

PERSON: Jonathan Rees

PERSON: Chris Stoeckert

PERSON: Alan Ruttenberg

2/2/2009 Alan and Bjoern discussing FACS run output data. This is a data item because it is about the cell population. Each element records an event and is typically further composed a set of measurment data items that record the fluorescent intensity stimulated by one of the lasers.

2009-03-16: removed datum as alternative term as datum specifically refers to singular form, and is thus not an exact synonym.

2009-03-16: data item deliberatly ambiguous: we merged data set and datum to be one entity, not knowing how to define singular versus plural. So data item is more general than datum.

An information content entity that is intended to be a truthful statement about something (modulo, e.g., measurement precision or other systematic errors) and is constructed/acquired by a method that reliably tends to produce (approximately) truthful statements.

Data items include counts of things, analyte concentrations, and statistical summaries.

data

data item