Also, if you tell me the loading, what the material is (E), and what the moment of inertia (I) are, I can tell you how much the member will rotate and deflect. E and I are critical to making the jump from forces to some form of deformation. Euler-Bernoulli is actually a simplification that ignores a lot of important factors that really don't matter when you have high span length/member depth ratios (99% of normal beams in reality).
Moment of inertia is a quantity that requires a reference point. Take your plate for example. The bh^3/12 term is actually the moment of inertia of the section with respect to its centroid (the centroid is the "center" in an average sense, but it can get complicated). Ad^2 is a correction term, if you want the moment of inertia with respect to something besides the centroid.
We both assumed you were referring to the structural engineering definition since you mentioned Euler-Bernoulli. Moment of inertia is also the constant relating moment on a body and its angular acceleration. In the dynamic sense, mass is for linear motion what moment of inertia is for rotational motion.