I am a member of The Physics Society and I am very much convinced about the reason for the existence of the society.   According to the founder and my Professor R.Ananthan, the education system is in such a way that students who can memorize better can score better in exams.  Very few exams test the knowledge of students.  Also, the so called ‘brilliant’ students are more informative about the subject and less knowledgeable about the subject.

Many people refer “Information” as “Knowledge”.  Recently I saw this in a Tweet: “One person’s knowledge is another person’s information”.  I disagree with this.  Because, in my perception, both are different.

In my perception Knowledge is “Information with understanding/application of mind” and Information is “Data about some fact”.   My view point is this: if both Information and Knowledge are same, then which sentence would you prefer (a) “You are a very knowledgeable person” or (b) “You are a very informative person”?

A simple example will explain the difference between Information and Knowledge:

Many persons who think that they are good in Mathematics or at least the basic four operations (Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division) may still be informative about the basic operations and not knowledgeable about them.  For example, they may know that -1 x -1 = +1 (because they were informed about this rule by their teacher) but they may not know “Why -1 x -1 = +1 (and not -1x-1 = -1)?”.

Do you know why “Negative Number multiplied by another Negative Number is a Positive Number” (i.e. -1 x -1 = +1)? If yes, it means you are knowledgeable in Basic Mathematical Operations.  If no, it means that you are informative about Basic Mathematical Operations.