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A table is a mode of visual communication that maps the logical structure of a set of data into a hierarchical matrix. Tabular data consists of discrete data and/or a combination of dependent and independent variables.
A unidimensional table, such as a list or table of contents, has a single hierarchy. A bidimensional table is a table that consists of two dimensions, and two or more hierarchies appearing as data subsets. Mathematical tables (including multiplication tables), tide tables, spreadsheets, and the Gregorian calendar are all examples of practical bidimensional tables.
To facilitate representation in two dimensions (e.g., on paper or in information graphics, higher-dimensional tables of complex data sets are often represented in an exploded view comprising multiple bidimensional tables; others deviate from perpendicularity in order to convey complex relationships in a single table.
Information technology
Data tables are used extensively in computers, in forms as diverse as equal-sized and consecutive blocks of memory locations, on one hand, and "scatter-storage" schemes relying on what are more conventionally known as hash functions, on another. Each is a distinct data structure in computer science. Use of tables is more likely to be invisible to anyone but a few colleagues of the programmer, than to improve comprehension of the tables' contents; in many cases, their technical effectiveness would outweigh even loss of comprehensibility.
Examples include:
- all the examples of applications of the n-dimensional array so familiar to computer science students;
- symbol tables;
- inode tables; and
- various forms of table-driven software where the software is controlled from a table, or hardware is relieved, via table-stored data, of some burden of computation.
Historical relationship to furniture
In medieval counting houses, the tables were covered with a piece of chequered cloth, to count money. Exchequer is an archaic term for the English institution which accounted for money owed to the monarch. Thus the checkerboard tables of stacks of coins are a concrete realization of this information.
See also
"Table (information)"