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39 Is it possible to measure the Quality of Information? And by the way - What is Information? And what is Quality?
By András Györfi · Hospital of Marghita

Doug Elias · Ithaca College

I think I'm beginning to experience some of your literary flair, Andras. Impressive. Okay, I believe I have a handle on things, then. For my part, ... [more]

I think I'm beginning to experience some of your literary flair, Andras. Impressive. Okay, I believe I have a handle on things, then. For my part, taking the second question first: "quality" is that set of characteristics of an entity that reflect its conformation to a given template or ideal, along a multitude of potential dimensions-for-comparison. The actual selection of the comparison-dimensions is context-specific, so a 'low-quality' classification in one context and 'high-quality' in another is a reasonable expectation -- the context sets the prioritization of those characteristics admitting a quality comparison. With that in mind: 'is it possible to measure the quality of information?' begs the questions of 'what is information?', and 'within what context will it be evaluated?' ... this immediately implies that I do not feel 'quality' to be a context-less quantity of 'information' Here's a gedankenexperiment: take a Nobel-level dissertation, as expressed by experts in the appropriate field; lay it in front of two separate audiences: other peer-experts in the field who have not yet seen the dissertation, and rank novices who can barely sound out the terms. The content, and thus the potential to convey information, remains the same in both cases; but only to the first audience can information truly be transmitted, because they are the ones with the basic cognitive capabilities to understand the message; exactly the same sequence of symbols is utterly un-understandable to the second audience, and would rated as 'low-quality', while the first audience would likely vote with their peers and give it a 'high-quality' ranking. Do you, Andras, evaluate this situation similarly? If not, where do we part ways? Regards, Doug

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