4 ms·

This is the only time I've heard "datum" used outside the context of GIS.

• eru 11y ago
  Datum is the singular of data.
  • conceit 11y ago
    The singular of data would be a 1, to be pedantic. Edit: Information is uncountable, so maybe data should as well be. Is that plural or singular? Yes, you can have sand and a grain of sand, but the grain is hardly sandy. A lone 1 is hardly, excuse the pun, dative.
    • znpy 11y ago
      'data' comes from latin, and 'data' is plura. the singular is 'datum'. In Italian (the direct descendent of latin) there is both singular and plural for datum (singular: 'dato', plural: 'dati')
      • conceit 11y ago
        that's totally ignoring what I said. I hope you feel smug about it. Edit: Interestingly, wiktionary says informations is just uncommon, and that information is not data, it's the meaning of data, in the computing context. ... with source. It links to a paper about an ISO standard, no less, that tries to define vocabulary and happens to use data as singular. Document Reader [is a] Character reader whose input data is the text from specific areas on a given type of form [1]. (This makes me so happy right now.) Overall, if it's a technical term they invented, the authors are free to name their language construct whatever they want. But if it's so fudged that the author even writes datums ... I rest my case. [1] https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:2382:ed-1:v1:en https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:std:iso-iec:2382:ed-1:v1:en
  • dTal 11y ago
    In Latin. In English "data" is a mass noun. Nobody really says "data are" unless they're writing an academic paper.