CAT / FIA FMA Syllabus A. The Nature, Source And Purpose Of Management Informa - Information - Notes ^{2 / 4}

Different sources of information are available to organisations, including those available within and outside the organisation.

Such information will become the input into an organisation’s decision making and management accounting systems.

Data can be classified as:

1. Primary OR Secondary data

2. Discrete OR Continuous data

Classification of data

1. Primary data is data collected especially for a specific purpose

   e.g. collecting the labour costs of last year from our accounts department to prepare new budgets

   Secondary data is data which has already been collected elsewhere, for some other purpose but which can be used or adapted for the survey being conducted, 

   e.g. government statistics such as inflation (produced by the government for other purposes) can be used in our organisation to estimate next year's budgets

2. Discrete data is data which can only take a finite (integer) or countable number of values within a range

   e.g. you cannot have 1.25 units but 1 unit, 2 units.

   Continuous data is data which can take on any value. It is measured rather than counted

    e.g. a person can be 1.585m tall.