*cough, cough*
[Microphone feedback]
Is this thing on?
[tap, tap, tap]
(Oh, good. Ahem.)
Ladies and Gentlemen, can we please stop pretending that the word "data" is plural?
Thank you. Good night everyone, drive safely.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOh, all right, I'll elaborate.
ReplyDeleteLook. We don't use the word "data" like a plural anymore. At best it is plural in the sense that "sand" is plural: a large contiguous mass of material, any piece of which is almost infinitely divisible. In other words, it has become a mass noun in the common usage, and very sensibly so.
Nobody uses "datum". Very few people who have data could actually tell you what one "datum" of it is. I collect reams of data, and I have no idea what a "datum" would be: a single sensor record? An element in that sensor record? If I break down one sensor record into individual parts, most of them make no sense on their own - but some of them do. If I break any of them down into bits, those bits lose their meaning instantly: they are no longer data, they are noise... unless it's a field of flags, in which case it's still data. It doesn't break down cleanly, you see? It's like "chickens": when you start dealing with giblets and thighs and hooves and whatever, you're not talking about "chickens" anymore, you're talking about "chicken".
So please, let's be grown-ups about this.
(This rant has been brought to you by: The Economist Magazine, an excellent publication with sometimes inscrutable editorial standards)
All right, all right: I mean the English word "data". I will concede that, in Latin, "data" is plural.
ReplyDeletehttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/data
ReplyDeletehttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/datum
:-)
All lies!
ReplyDelete