Data are no longer the things given, that is to say, our observations of the world. Rather, the evolution of the word from a plural to a singular form suggest that the idea of data has been transfigured, with concrete consequences for how we interact with one another. This is not an interpretive language game inspired by Derrida. The advent of computers has turned ‘data’ into the digital equivalent of snow - something that’s essentially uncountable and easier to refer to in aggregate. Specifically, since the dawn of the digital age, data has become an entity unto itself, rather than a collection of observations implied by the historical definition. While seemingly minor semantic quibbles, the evolution of the usage of the word reveals something interesting about modern society. As can be seen from the plot below, over the majority of that timeframe, the usage of ‘data are’ was significantly larger and growing much more quickly than it’s singular counterpart ‘data is’ (these trends also hold for other singular/plural modifiers, such as was/were, this/these, etc.).

‘data are’ in books during that time period. More interestingly, we can examine the Google N-gram trends over the last approximately 100 years and compare the popularity of the phrases ‘data is’ vs. Regardless of the feelings of logophiles, there can be no question that in the vernacular, it has become perfectly acceptable to say things like, “Your data was wrong” or, “That data is _”. Indeed, what constitutes proper usage of the word has even been promulgated in mainstream media outlets, including this article in The Guardian, and this piece discussing the results of an unofficial online poll conducted by the popular data science website FiveThirtyEight. The debate over which definition is correct continues in linguistic circles. “I have a lot of sand in my shoes”, instead of, “I have an extremely large number but finite quantity of individual particles of sand in my shoes”. Since it would be awkward to refer to every raindrop during a thunderstorm or every grain of sand on the beach individually, we refer to them en masse, i.e. Fast forward to today, and the word ‘data’ has morphed, and is commonly considered a mass plural noun, similar to ‘rain’ or ‘sand’. In essence, data are a plurality of observations data are the things given. It is further derived from the Latin verb ‘dare’, meaning ‘to give’. What is ‘data’, and where did the word come from? Without delving too deeply into obscure etymological details, the word ‘data’ is the plural form of the Latin word ‘datum’, which means the ‘thing given’. But what could be forgiven as a minor grammatical mistake might actually be a microcosmic example of a modern cultural phenomenon: we no longer seem to know the difference between data and information, and that’s dangerous.

If you’re of a certain age or have worked in a scientific discipline, you might readily spot the error that my peer reviewer observed in my mistakenly singular usage of the plural word ‘ data’.

“Wrong! It should be these data ARE - NOT this data IS!”. I distinctly remember his handwritten scribbles on the draft manuscript:

However, there is one artifact that has remained firmly entrenched in my mind oddly enough, it has nothing to do with the paper itself, but rather a comment that same gentleman had provided during the peer review process. The reviews were generally quite positive, with one delightful Englishman noting that the paper was “unusually well written.” As with most good things though, after patting myself on the back, now, several years later, I’ve forgotten most of the details of the paper. After several weeks of writing sessions, I submitted the paper for an internal peer review. A few years ago, I was writing a technical paper for an upcoming oil and gas conference.

Datum vs.data