RYAN ELLIOTT

Explain the factors affecting the quality of information.

Accuracy

• Before a book is published, it is important to know if sales will be of a sufficient level to cover the production costs.

• Imagine the consequences for the publisher if a decision made to produce a book hinged on a wildly inaccurate sales estimate.

Up-to-date

• It is vital that goods are re-ordered as soon as they are needed to ensure stock is always on the shelves.

• Imagine the consequences if stock levels were only checked once per week – and hence goods ordered only once per week.

Completeness

• Imagine the consequences if our class had text books that only covered half of our course.

Relevance

• Say a store manager asked for a report on the sales of canned goods, and was given a list of every can sold detailing the product, the customer and the time and date sold. The information is complete and accurate but is not relevant in this context.

Effective Presentation

• Imagine the impact if the authors of a text book did not divide the text into paragraph’s or illustrate their points with diagrams.

• Suppose the authors of an ICT book assumed everyone reading it already had a high level of ICT knowledge – would all readers be able to understand it?

H0MEWO®K

• Read pages 12 + 13