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"If you torture your data long enough they will confess to anything"

• alex_stoddard 16y ago
  Great adage. It is attributed to economist Ronald Coase. (I also enjoyed seeing it quoted here grammatically correctly, the word data is plural, datum being the singular. Wikipedia has it grammatically incorrect but as Coase never published the phrase who knows if his grammar was as good as his maxim).
  • jessriedel 16y ago
    MW says that the singular usage is standard now: >USAGE. "Data" leads a life of its own quite independent of datum, of which it was originally the plural. It occurs in two constructions: as a plural noun (like earnings), taking a plural verb and plural modifiers (as these, many, a few) but not cardinal numbers, and serving as a referent for plural pronouns; and as an abstract mass noun (like information), taking a singular verb and singular modifiers (as this, much, little), and being referred to by a singular pronoun. Both constructions are standard. The plural construction is more common in print, perhaps because the house style of some publishers mandates it.