Lecture 9 IST 110 section 2 notes:
* administrivia
* any presentations scheduled, and presentations scheduled for next week
* Exercises on information systems
1 What is an organization?
Traditional: structured group of people with defined purposes and definite hierarchy e.g. pyramid, goal
Nouveau: each agent has tasks yet each task works towards a specific goal, structure adapts to the goal
2 What is a system?
mechanisms to capture data at point of origin, to create new information, to convey and to cradle data and information, into a database, and communicate output.
how the organisation runs, organizations are systems, but not vice versa
3 Example uses of information by organizations?
census bureau to use census data to allocate representatives
psu uses tax information for financial aid
organizations use information4 What is an information system?
collection of mechanisms (agents) to acquire, record, organize, retrieve, display,and disseminate information
implemented by info tech. usable enough
6 Dimensions
formal vs. informal (concreate information/trivial information) types of communication
horizontal vs. vertical (between peers, between levels in heirarchy)
time (the when of information flow)
content (accuracy and relevence)
form (presentation)
7 Examples of information systems, particularly that the book does not cover
5 Example uses of information systems
Section 2 exercise in classifying Info systems on dimensions
10/2/00
FER
warning system ATMs beer and diapers
formal/informal formal formal informal mostly
horz/vert mostly vert signal atm as a node vert/real action horizontal
you and atm
atm and bank
time short short basically periodic report/asap
content
accuracy nominally high v.high high
relevance nominally high v. high some irrelivencies in report
form elect and/or sounds text/icon/beeps paper
* review AI, Genetic algorithms, expert systems