A person must understand how different types of information are related to the individual systems that carry and produce them before she can confidently discuss diverse examples of information or information systems. She must also have a good command of appropriate and available descriptive tools if she hopes to communicate effectively.

Human description is a product of thought discuss information systems or any other fancy. Human-created description is a kind of representation Any descriptive information is some sort of sign. The term sign generally refers to forms of information a person can consciously acknowledge and interpret. However, I propose it can be loosely applied to any information, because according to the definition I proposed earlier, the word information signifies difference or a degree of difference within a system. The more abstract the sign, the more its form is independent of the thing it describes. --a form of information that stands or substitutes for another area of information.There are several kinds of description a person can use to shape or make sense of her world and any of its constituents. Each kind-- including a photograph, line graph, three-dimensional scale model, hologram, computer simulation, diagram, written text, sonogram, or mathematical notation-- is apprehended differently by a person's sensory and cognitive mechanisms, and also by her conscious mind. Each can represent how a particular area of information exists, behaves, or is communicated. Description can shape a person's physical surroundings and being, and affect the way she views her world. The differences among the modes of description accomodate variations in the complexity, composition, and behaviors of information and information systems. A tool's limitations reflect its human creator's limited abilities to observe and understand the world.

If a person describes a thing, idea, situation, or anything else; that description is a compound form of information that exists simultaneously in a mental system of thought and ideas, in the physical cognitive systems that presumably allow those ideas to exist, and in the physical form (such as a written caption or a diagram) that carries the information to its receiver.

If a person knows how the individual parts of a system behave and interact over a specified interval of time, she can describe what happens to a particular area of matter and/or energy, or information within that system. A group of people discussing the aesthetic qualities of the Chrysler Building may not be able to communicate well or efficiently if the word "classic" means something different to each member of the group. Human modes of thinking and description evolve over time.

First, I'll talk about different modes and their structures, then I'll talk about how the structure ofeach mode relates to what it describes.

Many descriptive tools are variations of three distinct types of representation -- linguistic (written text), visual (diagrams), and mathematical (written mathmatical notation).

Diagrams generally resemble basic visual features of things or ideas, or spatial or temporal vector features of proceses or energy they represent.

"graphics of various types preceded written language and serve many of the same functions. What renders graphics privileged is the possibility of using space and elements in space to express relations a meanings directly, relations and meanings that are spatial literally as well as metaphorically."

http://graphics.stanford.edu/~maneesh/augcog/webpage/docs/mapscommunicate.pdf

Unlike diagrams, linguistic and mathematical notations have no direct resemblance or relationship to what they represent. Language, the most universal human mode of communication, can be defined as: "a system of conventional spoken or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, communicate."

http://www.britannica.com/search?query=language&ct=&fuzzy=N

Written and spoken English are transmitted linearly, one word symbol at a time. The words that comprise English are not semantically unique. Mathematial notation consists of defined, unambiguous axioms and terms. It is more abstract than language and useful for describing applications or ideal situations that can be measured or divided into discrete parts with little or no ambiguity.

http://www.siam.org/mii/node11.html

Mathematical tools include numbers and other symbols that comprise systems including algebra, trigonometry, arithmetic, calculus, geometry, statistics, combinatorics and probability theory. Mathematical symbols can be grouped together into statements or equations according to the rules of the particular branch of mathematics they belong to. The primary character of mathematical notation is symbolic and abstract.

The human genome project is essentially **.

A star chart -- for instance, the one found here:

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/stars/ chart/

is a representation of the heavens from the perspecive of one person standing at the south pole and one at the north pole.(true?)

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