thumb|200px|Shkronja "'''i'''" është shenjë ndërkombëtare e informacionit.
'''Informacion''' (lat. ''informatio'' = formim; arsimim; lajm-ërim; njoftim; sqarim) quhet shenjave të çfarëdo lloji. Në përgjithësi informacion është çfarëdo lloj lajmi apo komunikim) i shkruar apo gojor (i folur), është mjet njohës i mjedisit. Informacioni është diçka që mund të mësojmë, njohim apo kuptojmë. Në gjuhën e përditshme do të thotë njouri apo dituri rreth një çështjeje apo ecurie. Informacioni, në një përkufizim më të gjerë, është mbledhja, përpunimi dhe renditja e një të dhëne që shton diturinë dhe njohurinë e marrësit. Me fjalë të tjera, informacioni është rrethana në të cilën e dhëna është marrë. 

Një përcaktim të saktë e të pranueshëm nga të gjithë për informacionin nuk ka.

Informacioni është koncept i përdorur gjerësisht në shumë fusha të jetës së përditshme.
==Përkufizimi i informacionit==
==Informacioni dhe lajmi==
==Matja e informacionit==
==Shiko edhe==
* Dituria
* Kibernetika
* Komunikacioni
* Informatika
* Lajmi
* Njohuria
* Shenja
==Lidhje të jashtme==

Category:Informatikë
Category:Dituri
Category:Epistimologji
Category:Filozofi

be-x-old:Інфармацыя

eo:Informo
es:Información

ia:Information

thumbnail|right|190px|The [[ASCII codes for the word "Wikipedia" represented in binary, the numeral system most commonly used for encoding computer information.]]

'''Information''' as a concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings.  Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of control, meaning, mental stimulus, representation.

Many people speak about the information technologies, and even though informatics, information science and computer science are often in the spotlight, the word "information" is often used without careful consideration of the various meanings it has acquired.

== Etymology ==
According to the English was the act of ''informing'', or giving form or shape to the mind, as in education, instruction, or training.  A quote from 1387: "Five books come down from heaven for information of mankind." It was also used for an ''item'' of training, ''e.g.'' a particular instruction.  "Melibee had heard the great skills and reasons of Dame Prudence, and her wise information and techniques." (1386)

The English word was apparently derived by adding the common "noun of action" ending "''-ation''" (descended through Francais from Latin "''-tio''") to the earlier verb ''to inform'', in the sense of to give form to the mind, to discipline, instruct, teach: "Men so wise should go and inform their kings." (1330)  ''Inform'' itself comes (via French) from the Latin verb ''informare'', to give form to, to form an idea of. Furthermore, Latin itself already even contained the word ''informatio'' meaning concept or idea, but the extent to which this may have influenced the development of the word ''information'' in English is unclear.

As a final note, the ancient Greek word for ''form'' was [eidos], and this word was famously used in a technical philosophical sense by [Plato] (and later Aristotle) to denote the ideal identity or essence of something (see [Theory of forms]). "Eidos" can also be associated with [thought], [proposition] or even [concept].

== Information as a message ==

'''Information''' is the state of a system of interest. Message is the information materialized.

Information is a quality of a message from a sender to one or more receivers. Information is always ''about'' something (size of a parameter, occurrence of an event, etc). Viewed in this manner, information does not have to be accurate. It may be a truth or a lie, or just the sound of a falling tree. Even a disruptive noise used to inhibit the flow of communication and create misunderstanding would in this view be a form of information.  However, generally speaking, if the ''amount'' of information in the received message increases, the message is more accurate.

This model assumes there is a definite sender and at least one receiver. Many refinements of the model assume the existence of a common language understood by the sender and at least one of the receivers. An important variation identifies information as that which would be communicated by a message if it were sent from a sender to a receiver capable of understanding the message. Notably, it is not required that the sender be capable of understanding the message, or even cognizant that there is a message.  Thus, information is something that can be extracted from an environment, e.g., through observation, reading or measurement.

Information is a term with many meanings depending on context, but is as a rule closely related to such concepts as meaning, knowledge, instruction, communication, representation, and mental stimulus. Simply stated, information is a message received and understood. In terms of data, it can be defined as a collection of facts from which conclusions may be drawn. There are many other aspects of information since it is the knowledge acquired through study or experience or instruction. But overall, information is the result of processing, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the person receiving it.

Communication theory provides a numerical measure of the uncertainty of an outcome. For example, we can say that "the signal contained thousands of bits of information".  Communication theory tends to use the concept of information entropy, generally attributed to C.E. Shannon (see below).

Another form of information is Fisher information, a concept of R.A. Fisher. This is used in application of statistics to estimation theory and to science in general.  Fisher information is thought of as the amount of information that a message carries about an unobservable parameter.  It can be computed from knowledge of the likelihood function defining the system.  For example, with a normal likelihood function, the Fisher information is the reciprocal of the variance of the law.  In the absence of knowledge of the likelihood law, the Fisher information may be computed from normally distributed score data as the reciprocal of their second moment.

Even though information and data are often used interchangeably, they are actually very different. Data is a set of unrelated information, and as such is of no use until it is properly evaluated. Upon evaluation, once there is some significant relation between data, and they show some relevance, then they are converted into information. Now this same data can be used for different purposes. Thus, till the data convey some information, they are not useful.

=== Measuring information entropy ===

The view of information as a message came into prominence with the publication in 1948 of an influential paper by Claude Shannon, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication."  This paper provides the foundations of information theory and endows the word ''information'' not only with a technical meaning but also a measure. If the sending device is equally likely to send any one of a set of <math>N</math> messages, then the preferred measure of "the information produced when one message is chosen from the set" is the base two logarithm of <math>N</math> (This measure is called ''self-information''). In this paper, Shannon continues:

A complementary way of measuring information is provided by program: the information content of a sequence is the number of bits of the shortest program that computes it. The sequence below would have a very low algorithmic information measurement since it is a very predictable pattern, and as the pattern continues the measurement would not change. Shannon information would give the same information measurement for each symbol, since they are statistically random, and each new symbol would increase the measurement.
:123456789101112131415161718192021

It is important to recognize the limitations of traditional information theory and algorithmic information theory from the perspective of human meaning. For example, when referring to the meaning content of a message Shannon noted “Frequently the messages have ''meaning…'' these semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.  The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected ''from a set of possible messages''” (emphasis in original).

In information theory signals are part of a process, not a substance; they do something, they do not contain any specific meaning. Combining algorithmic information theory and information theory we can conclude that the most random signal contains the most information as it can be interpreted in any way and cannot be compressed.

Michael Reddy noted that "'signals' of the mathematical theory are 'patterns that can be exchanged'.  There is no message contained in the signal, the signals convey the ability to select from a set of possible messages."  In information theory "the system must be designed to operate for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of design".

== Information as a pattern ==

Information is any represented economy, however inaccurately. What are commonly referred to as data in electro-magnetic patterns in a devices are related to something other than the pattern itself, such as text characters to be displayed and keyboard input. Signals, signs, and symbols are also in this category.  On the other hand, according to semiotics, data is symbols with certain syntax and information is data with a certain semantic.  Painting and drawing contain information to the extent that they represent something such as an assortment of objects on a table, a profile, or a landscape. In other words, when a pattern of something is transposed to a pattern of something else, the latter is information. This would be the case whether or not there was anyone to perceive it.

But if information can be defined merely as a pattern, does that mean that neither value or some quantum of meaning. On this view, information may indeed be characterized as a pattern; but this is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. 

An individual entry in a telephone book, which follows a specific pattern formed by name, address and telephone number, does not become "informative" in some sense unless and until it possesses some degree of utility, value or meaning. For example, someone might look up a girlfriend's number, might order a take away etc. The vast majority of numbers will never be construed as "information" in any meaningful sense. The gap between data and information is only closed by a behavioral bridge whereby some value, utility or meaning is added to transform mere data or pattern into information.

When one constructs a representation of an object, one can selectively extract from the object (sampling) or use a encoding), or both. The sampling and encoding result in representation. An example of the former is a "sample" of a product; an example of the latter is "verbal description" of a product. Both contain information of the product, however inaccurate. When one interprets representation, one can predict a broader pattern from a limited number of observations (inference) or understand the relation between patterns of two different things (decoding). One example of the former is to sip a soup to know if it is spoiled; an example of the latter is examining footprints to determine the animal and its condition. In both cases, information sources are not constructed or presented by some "sender" of information. 
Regardless, information is dependent upon, but usually unrelated to and separate from, the medium or media used to express it. In other words, the position of a theoretical series of bits, or even the output once interpreted by a computer or similar device, is unimportant, except when someone or something is present to interpret the information. Therefore, a quantity of information is totally distinct from its medium.

== Information as sensory input ==

Often information is viewed as a type of input to an organism or designed device. Inputs are of two kinds. Some inputs are important to the function of the organism (for example, food) or device (energy) by themselves. In his book ''Sensory Ecology,'' Dusenbery<!-- who? --> called these causal inputs. Other inputs (information) are important only because they are associated with causal inputs and can be used to predict the occurrence of a causal input at a later time (and perhaps another place). Some information is important because of association with other information but eventually there must be a connection to a causal input. In practice, information is usually carried by weak stimuli that must be detected by specialized sensory systems and amplified by energy inputs before they can be functional to the organism or device. For example, light is often a causal input to plants but provides information to animals. The colored light reflected from a flower is too weak to do much photosynthetic work but the visual system of the bee detects it and the bee's nervous system uses the information to guide the bee to the flower, where the bee often finds nectar or pollen, which are causal inputs, serving a nutritional function.

Information is any type of sensory input. When an organism with a nervous system receives an input, it transforms the input into an electrical signal. This is regarded information by some. The idea of representation is still relevant, but in a slightly different manner. That is, while abstract painting does not represent anything concretely, when the viewer sees the painting, it is nevertheless transformed into electrical signals that create a representation of the painting. Defined this way, information does not have to be related to truth, communication, or representation of an object. Entertainment in general is not intended to be informative. Music, the performing arts, amusement parks, works of fiction and so on are thus forms of information in this sense, but they are not necessarily forms of information according to some definitions given above. Consider another example: food supplies both nutrition and taste for those who eat it. If information is equated to sensory input, then nutrition is not information but taste is.

== Information as an influence which leads to a transformation ==

Information is any type of pattern that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns. In this sense, there is no need for a conscious mind to perceive, much less appreciate, the pattern. Consider, for example, DNA. The sequence of nucleotides is a pattern that influences the formation and development of an organism without any need for a conscious mind.  Systems theory at times seems to refer to information in this sense, assuming information does not necessarily involve any conscious mind, and patterns circulating (due to feedback) in the system can be called information. In other words, it can be said that information in this sense is something potentially perceived as representation, though not created or presented for that purpose.

When media and their effects on human cultures, he refers to the structure of artifacts that in turn shape our behaviors and mindsets. Also, pheromones are often said to be "information" in this sense.

(See also Gregory Bateson.)

== Information as a property in physics ==