3 ms·

I can't get past the first 3 words!! Sorry. "DATA ARE valuable". Is 'data' like water or like sheep? :) Can whatever-it-is be counted (like sheep) or not (

I can't get past the first 3 words!! Sorry. "DATA ARE valuable". Is 'data' like water or like sheep? :) Can whatever-it-is be counted (like sheep) or not (like water). Eg: Water are valuable. (Wrong!!) Sheep are valuable. (Perfectly acceptable, phew!) For me, data is like water. 'Data is valuable'. 'A piece of data is valuable'. 'Lots of pieces are valuable'. 'Data are valuable' <- sounds all wrong!

newbamboo 5y ago
Data is short for data points. But it’s also sometimes short for data file. It takes an expert to understand these nuances and use data correctly.
- itisit 5y ago
  Data is not short for anything. It's the plural of datum.
  - newbamboo 5y ago
    People say things like “load the data” then “it won’t load.” They are referring to a data file. Sometimes they say “we need more data” and they really mean more data points. I rarely hear the term “datum” but it’s not technically incorrect, just a bit out of touch. What is a datum? Any piece of data will have multiple properties, so a singular piece is really a data point, which implies a number of bits of datum. I know it’s hard to understand this stuff.
  - krastanov 5y ago
    This used to be completely true. It definitely is not always so in modern American English. But we might be just fighting over prescriptive versus descriptive approach to linguistics.
- gjs278 5y ago
vulcan01 5y ago
The Economist is a British publication, and generally tends to follow stricter grammatical rules than what I assume is your American English. "Datum" is singular and "data" is plural, so The Economist have used "are" instead of "is".
- krastanov 5y ago
  You are taking a prescriptive approach (which is fine), but it is just as reasonable to take the descriptive approach to linguistics and say "in modern American English 'data' is not countable, and it is used the way 'water' is used". It is self-consistent and (currently) grammatically correct to say "this data is important" like you would say "this water is wet". I guess this implies "datum" is archaic now. At least for the linguistic/cultural bubble in which I exist.
  - Brybry 5y ago
    Even in British English usage as an abstract mass noun with singular verbs is acceptable (possibly even the norm[1]). Usage as a plural noun is an Economist house style choice[2]. It's hard to tell how well the Economist sticks to that style choice. A Google site: search, with a date range of the last 10 years, shows no usage of "datum" (except for the article about the subject). An Google site: search for usages of "data is" in the last 10 years returns plenty of results. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%22data%20is%22,%22data%20are%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%... [2] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/07/13/data-or-datum https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/07/13/data-or-...
- smartscience 5y ago
  While opinion is split on this, these days I don't think you can appeal to strictness alone to justify 'data' being plural, given the way usage has already gone. People (like me) who say 'data is...' are simply using data as a mass noun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun), which seems to be a reasonable direction to be taking the language. I may be influenced by the fact that I usually see 'datum' used to refer to a reference point or marker in some arbitrary space, and thus in my mind is now another word separate from 'data' (albeit with shared etymology). If I had more than one datum, I'd call them 'datums', though I've yet to test how acceptable this would be in a formal setting.
curiousllama 5y ago
> 'A piece of data is valuable' Nit: "Is" is singular because of "piece," not "data." As in, "the pieces of data are valuable."
rtkwe 5y ago
It's because we usually treat data as a singular abstract concept when it is technically the plural of datum which is a singular piece of information.

newbamboo 5y ago

Data is short for data points. But it’s also sometimes short for data file. It takes an expert to understand these nuances and use data correctly.

itisit 5y ago
Data is not short for anything. It's the plural of datum.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  People say things like “load the data” then “it won’t load.” They are referring to a data file. Sometimes they say “we need more data” and they really mean more data points. I rarely hear the term “datum” but it’s not technically incorrect, just a bit out of touch. What is a datum? Any piece of data will have multiple properties, so a singular piece is really a data point, which implies a number of bits of datum. I know it’s hard to understand this stuff.
- krastanov 5y ago
  This used to be completely true. It definitely is not always so in modern American English. But we might be just fighting over prescriptive versus descriptive approach to linguistics.
gjs278 5y ago

vulcan01 5y ago

The Economist is a British publication, and generally tends to follow stricter grammatical rules than what I assume is your American English. "Datum" is singular and "data" is plural, so The Economist have used "are" instead of "is".

krastanov 5y ago
You are taking a prescriptive approach (which is fine), but it is just as reasonable to take the descriptive approach to linguistics and say "in modern American English 'data' is not countable, and it is used the way 'water' is used". It is self-consistent and (currently) grammatically correct to say "this data is important" like you would say "this water is wet". I guess this implies "datum" is archaic now. At least for the linguistic/cultural bubble in which I exist.
- Brybry 5y ago
  Even in British English usage as an abstract mass noun with singular verbs is acceptable (possibly even the norm[1]). Usage as a plural noun is an Economist house style choice[2]. It's hard to tell how well the Economist sticks to that style choice. A Google site: search, with a date range of the last 10 years, shows no usage of "datum" (except for the article about the subject). An Google site: search for usages of "data is" in the last 10 years returns plenty of results. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%22data%20is%22,%22data%20are%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=%... [2] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/07/13/data-or-datum https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2012/07/13/data-or-...
smartscience 5y ago
While opinion is split on this, these days I don't think you can appeal to strictness alone to justify 'data' being plural, given the way usage has already gone. People (like me) who say 'data is...' are simply using data as a mass noun (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun), which seems to be a reasonable direction to be taking the language. I may be influenced by the fact that I usually see 'datum' used to refer to a reference point or marker in some arbitrary space, and thus in my mind is now another word separate from 'data' (albeit with shared etymology). If I had more than one datum, I'd call them 'datums', though I've yet to test how acceptable this would be in a formal setting.

curiousllama 5y ago

> 'A piece of data is valuable' Nit: "Is" is singular because of "piece," not "data." As in, "the pieces of data are valuable."

rtkwe 5y ago

It's because we usually treat data as a singular abstract concept when it is technically the plural of datum which is a singular piece of information.