DL FELLOWSHIP: What is Open Data: What is Open Data?

What is Open Data?

What is data?

Data is a collection of facts in the form of:

Numbers
Words
Measurements
Observations
etc

What is this?

Maize 2,123,138 1,516,773 71.4 272,730,660.51 128.46

What about this?

Maize

2,123,138

1,516,773

71.4

272,730,660.51

128.46

What about this?

Maize	2,123,138	1,516,773	71.4	272,730,660.51	128.46
beans	1,083,886	318,904	29.4	21,200,411.50	19.56
sorghum	222,023	82,187	37.0	9,094,112.10	40.96
Sugarcane	213,780	89,788	42.0	173,103,519.20	809.73
Tea	198,657	177,415	89.3	101,036,570.00	508.60
cowpeas	197,028	22,004	11.2	2,045,940.45	10.38
Wheat	131,309	126,188	96.1	25,621,563.00	95.12

What about this?

CROP	Area Cultivated ('000') ha	Area applied fert. ('000') ha	Applicati on rate (%)	TOTALS OF FERTILIZER TYPE PER CROP (KG)	Fertilizer consumpt ion (kg/Ha)
Maize	2,123,138	1,516,773	71.4	272,730,660.51	128.46
beans	1,083,886	318,904	29.4	21,200,411.50	19.56
sorghum	222,023	82,187	37.0	9,094,112.10	40.96
Sugarcane	213,780	89,788	42.0	173,103,519.20	809.73
Tea	198,657	177,415	89.3	101,036,570.00	508.60
cowpeas	197,028	22,004	11.2	2,045,940.45	10.38
Wheat	131,309	126,188	96.1	25,621,563.00	195.12

Structured vs Unstructured data

Why is presenting data in a structured way important?

What are the formats of data?

Comma Separated Values (CSV)
Tabular data (as found in spreadsheets)
JSON
XML

What are formats of data?

Why is data important?

Why should data be open?

Broad et. al. (2015, p.35) offer this definition of open data, it is “… data made available by governments, businesses and individuals for anyone to access, use and share.”