Science Memes

11068 readers

4641 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.

Rules

Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
Keep it rooted (on topic).
No spam.
Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.

Research Committee

[email protected]

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

195

Ackchuallly (mander.xyz)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 100 points 1 month ago (3 children)

As Wiktionary puts it:

The word data is more often used as an uncountable noun with a singular verb than as a plural noun with singular datum.

It's like "hair". You can hold a single 'hair', you can also hold three hairs. But if you're looking at an entire mane, you ain't counting, so it's referred to as "hair" again.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

Yeah, but for example, IEEE conference paper templates explicitly state "The word 'data' is plural, not singilar". So if you use it with a singular verb you will receive this post in an email and you can only say thank you and change it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

The piece of data and the data overall suggest that...

Over categorization is a lie that only causes more problems. Stop the forcing of categorizing things. Just let things exist.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And the word “data” is only one word, so “data is plural”

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe I'm whooshed, but you understand the concept of uncountable nouns, right?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The noun I’m referring to is the word “data” not the data themselves. “Data data” is 2 words, “data” is one word. The word (singular) “data” is plural

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In Latin, sure. But the word "datum" isn't a part of English, so we have instead the uncountable noun "data" which is derived from the Latin.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Datum is indeed a word in English. Singular point of information.