Let's say that one possesses some data or information that one wishes to map to some kind of numerical representation. I can't seem to come up with a word or phrase that describes it well.
As an example, it could be used when converting something like a date string ("2014-01-02") to a UNIX timestamp (1388620800).
Generally, I would imagine such a word would be used when the data has some kind of inherent ordering, but perhaps isn't directly usable with other numbers. I thought of "quantize", but this seems to imply that the data is somehow discrete, i.e. not continuous, which would (arguably) be inaccurate when referring to time.
Best Answer
You may use numericize or digitize
and though it does not imply numeric conversion, you may also use transform