Except, very literally, data is a collection of single points (ie what we call "anecdotes").
A datum has a value and a context in which it was 'given'. What you mean by "points" eludes me, maybe you could elaborate.
At a managers meeting "user stories" about poor support but all the KPIs looked good from the call center so Jeff dials in the number from the meeting speaker phone, gets put on hold, IVR spin cycle, hold again, etc .... His take away was basically "if the data and anecdotes don't match always default to the customer stories".
Hume figured this out quite a while ago and Kant had an interesting response to it. Think the lack of “necessity” is a problem? Try to find “time” or “space” in the data.
Data by itself is useless. It’s interesting to see peoples’ reaction to this.
This is exactly the kind of epistemic lens-polishing that keeps me reloading HN.
Paul Feyerabend is spinning in his grave.
Actual data is sampled randomly. Anecdotes very much are not.
To be fair, possibly because of this tongue-in-cheek statement, anecdote is sometimes used in place of datum and not as anecdote is usually defined.
But it is true that colloquially anecdote is sometimes used in place of datum.