3 ms·
Data is not short for anything. It's the plural of datum.
by itisit 5y ago
Data is not short for anything. It's the plural of datum.
- newbamboo 5y agoPeople 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 agoThis 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.