In the modern world, our daily activities follow and leave a rich trail of electronic data from e-mail and text messages to credit card transactions and medical records. At its simplest, the data could be an address book or contact list stored in a text file while more complex information such as a store’s inventory and customer information might take up terabytes of space on network servers and require full-time administrators to maintain it. Most of this data is stored in electronic databases of one kind or another where it can be searched, sorted and easily retrieved as needed.
After a basic understanding of how to work with computers, knowing the basics of how data is stored and manipulated is an important part of being technically savvy in today’s world. Whether you work with large amounts of data and need to organize it better or you need to communicate with the people who do, the better you understand the technology, the more effectively you’ll be able to face the daily challenges that come from living in a data-driven world.