A serious and urgent question, when did "data" a collective noun warrant a plural verb ex. "the data are ambiguous"
"Data" was not treated this way in the past and now it is everywhere. Where did it come from and why did it change?
"Data" was not treated this way in the past and now it is everywhere. Where did it come from and why did it change?
So for instance, whereas the compound noun phrase "law school entrance exams" is perfectly fine, "law schools entrance exam" is not. It has a plural on "schools", where it is not allowed to be, because that is not the head of the noun phrase.
According to this rule, we should not have words like "data processing", unless we treat "data" as plural. If we treat "data" as the plural of "datum", we must make it "datum processing".
Is that how it is in British English, or do they still make it "data processing"?
In any case, one cannot be a proper pedant about "data" and "datum", while continuing to use terms like "data storage".
But most people treat 'data' as a singular noun, especially when talking about computers etc.
For example:-
The data is being transferred from my computer to yours.
And I have to be honest, I've never heard anyone ask for a datum. "
It could be the case that the scientific pluralization is leaking into regular usage because more people are collectively reading / reporting on scientific studies. Alternatively, Google / Grammarly and similar tools might be suggesting it because it's been seen in their training data / examples.
In any case, IMHO 'datum' is a singular point of information, any reference to multiple points of information would make the noun plural.