Data is the lifeblood of any organization, providing essential insights to make informed decisions. With the advent of new technologies, data has become increasingly important in today's business world.

Data refers to information or pieces of information that are processed, analyzed, and used to inform ideas and support decision-making. Data is raw and unstructured facts that need to be processed, and it may seem random and useless, until it is collected and processed. When data is processed, organized, structured, or presented in a context that make it useful, then it becomes "information".

Data is important for scientific purposes and research and development purposes. Organizations need accurate data to make sound decisions in order to draw their strategies, deal with the public, and ensure staying ahead of their competitors. Data quality and reliability are critical to their accuracy, for use in decision support, predictions, projections, and solutions to various business and scientific and social challenges.

Data can come in various forms, including digital, text, image, audio, and video. Data can be collected from various sources such as surveys, interviews, online analytics tools, customer feedback, etc. with the help of data analysis techniques such as machine learning and artificial intelligence.

It is important to know the types of data, in order to know how to collect and facilitate their processing, and to choose the most appropriate type for the required process, study, or decision.

Data is mainly divided into two types: Descriptive/Qualitative Data (splits to: Ordinal, Nominal, and Logical) and Quantitative Data (splits to: Continuous and Discrete).