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"And again, I will give unto you a pattern in all things, that ye may not be deceived; for Satan is abroad in the land, and he goeth forth deceiving the nations - Wherefore he that prayeth, whose spirit is contrite, the same is accepted of me if he obey mine ordinances. He that speaketh, whose spirit is contrite, whose language is meek and edifieth, the same is of God if he obey mine ordinances. And again, he that trembleth under my power shall be made strong, and shall bring forth fruits of praise and wisdom, according to the revelations and truths which I have given you. And again, he that is overcome and bringeth not forth fruits, even according to this pattern, is not of me. Wherefore, by this pattern ye shall know the spirits in all cases under the whole heavens." D&C 52:14-19
Information / Patterns
Pattern finding is a basic first step in most scientific work. Data classification is a type of pattern finding, and can be considered the basis of modern science. If there are good data collection techniques, and resulting good data, then evaluation of this data typically revolves around finding various types of patterns within the data. These patterns might be as simple as counting the occurrence of a word or the occurrences of another data type. Organizing the data in packets, where each packet represents data where one attribute has a certain number of occurrences is one type of data mapping. When data are mapped, the patterns are often obvious.
Figure 10 is an example of patterns from data. In this case a grocery store CD phone address book was used. The CD phone address book lists every public phone number in the United States. The CD is classified in that it has the longitude and latitude of the phone jack, plus or minus about 40 feet. The CD also has four levels of the SIC Code (Standard Industrial Code used for taxation and Yellow Pages sorting) for each business phone number. By selecting and sorting on SIC Code 15, which stands for Building and Construction, and plotting the number of occurrences of this SIC code within geographic grid cells, where each cell is 7.5 minute wide in Longitude and 7.5 minutes high in Latitude, and plotting the results, a pattern emerges. The pattern shows major metropolitan areas within the United States. If you are selling plywood or other building supplies, it also shows where to locate your store within the metropolitan areas, plus or minus about 5 miles.
Patterns are the DNA of
information.1.43 Information can be defined as data in context related to a specific purpose (Figure 11). In the SIC mapping example (Figure 10), the data were the number of businesses with a specific SIC code, the context was the spatial relationship of these data, and one identified purpose was to optimally locate a building supply store, like a plywood store.
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paradoxes