What does the acronym GIGO stand for in data processing?

• A. Good In, Good Out
• B. Garbage Out, Garbage In
• C. Garbage In, Garbage Out
• D. Data In, Data Out

Answer: (C)

In data processing, the quality of the output depends on the quality of the input. Garbage In, Garbage Out captures this idea: if the data you feed into a system are messy, incorrect, or inconsistent, the results will be unreliable no matter how powerful the processing steps are. For example, a dataset with typos, missing values, or wrong units can lead to biased analytics or wrong decisions; cleaning the data and validating inputs before processing tends to produce accurate, trustworthy results. The other options don’t fit as well: Good In, Good Out is optimistic but not the standard rule; Data In, Data Out just describes data flow, not quality; Garbage Out, Garbage In reverses the usual order and is not the conventional phrase.