WordNet
n. unanalyzed data; data not yet subjected to analysis
Wikipedia
Raw data (also known as primary data) is a term for data collected from a source. Raw data has not been subjected to processing or any other manipulation, and are also referred to as primary data. Raw data is a relative term (see data). Raw data can be input to a computer program or used in manual procedures such as analyzing statistics from a survey. The term can refer to the binary data on electronic storage devices such as hard disk drives (also referred to as low-level data).
In computing, raw data may have the following attributes: possibly containing errors, not validated; in different ( colloquial) formats; uncoded or unformatted; and suspect, requiring confirmation or citation. For example, a data input sheet might contain dates as raw data in many forms: "31st January 1999", "31/01/1999", "31/1/99", "31 Jan", or "today". Once captured, this raw data may be processed stored as a normalized format, perhaps a Julian date, so as to be easier for computers and humans to interpret during later processing.
Raw data (sometimes called "sourcey" data or "eggy" data) are the data input to processing. A distinction is sometimes made between data and information to the effect that information is the end product of data processing. Raw data that has undergone processing are sometimes referred to as "cooked" data.
Although raw data has the potential to become "information," extraction, organization, and sometimes analysis and formatting for presentation are required for that to occur.
For example, a point-of-sale terminal (POS terminal) in a busy supermarket collects huge volumes of raw data each day, but that data doesn't yield much information until it is processed. Once processed, the data may indicate the particular items that each customer buys, when they buy them, and at what price. Such information could then become data for processing predictive marketing campaigns. As a result of processing, raw data sometimes ends up in a database, which enables the raw data to become accessible for further processing and analysis in any number of different ways.
Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) proposes that sharing raw data is important. by a post by Rufus Pollock of the Open Knowledge Foundation his call to action is "Raw Data Now", meaning that everyone should demand that governments and businesses share their information as raw data. He points out that "data drives a huge amount of what happens in our lives… because somebody takes the data and does something with it." To Berners-Lee, it is essentially from this sharing of raw data, that advances in science will emerge.
Usage examples of "raw data".
But the security monitoring is actually done up at Zanthus, with the raw data.
He'd routed a lot of sensor readings to his holographic panes, where analysis routines were reinterpreting the raw data.
But in the books, articles, and dissertations that Andrew Loeb was borrowing through ILL, he found exactly the raw data that a mathematically inclined person would need to come up with a sophisticated rules system based on scientific fact.
Or did it just read raw data, letting it flow past and through like a sea anemone sifting the ocean currents?
In this case, the information lies in the ordering and classification of raw data and not in the content itself.
The MAI can spin out hundred per cent accurate renderings for each clone from the raw data in the biolab machines.
After he'd killed her baby, she had become even less useful to him, unwilling to provide any additional raw data.
A great tearing fills my head, raw data seething through the coopted wisdom channels on its way to the downlink into the berserker expansion space.
It took years of experience to read efficiently that avalanche of raw data.