this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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The data tell a different story.
That's my ration of pedantry spent. You'd swear these people never went to school.
The future is now old man
The issue with pedantry is you have to make sure you're right - data here is the collective noun for a group of individual data, so is used correctly.
Plus "plummeted by a 33%" was literally right there
You’re technically correct but it’s one of those “technically correct”s that I would say is so far from people’s actual usage and the way other words work that it’s actually wrong and makes you sound stupid.
You wouldn’t say “The student body are…” or “the rat colony are…” They’re single bodies made up of smaller parts, so they get referred to as singular.
My PI always says “the data are” and it grates on me like nails on a chalkboard. It doesn’t make you sound smarter and more serious, it makes you sound like an out of touch, Reddit brained dipshit.
The phrase is “The data tells a different story”
Data itself is a singular as it’s a defined entity. It is the sun of its parts.
If it said “data points”, then you would be right.
It's clearly plural, in form and meaning. That's my point. If it were singular it'd be 'datum'. It has a second-declension plural ending.
This also bothers me. Why say 'data point' instead of 'datum'? Illiterate bloody philistines.
https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/data-is-or-data-are/
Seems like "data tells" is fine according to this.
They're referring to data as a single unified whole.
Family is singular despite being made of multiple members. Data is singular despite being composed of multiple data points.
That makes as much sense as "Countries says the story is different. I'm referring to countries as a single unified whole"
I think "data" can be both singular or plural, so both can work. I could be wrong though.
"What do the data say?"
"What does the data say?"
I always treat it like the latter since it's a singular body of datum points. A book isn't a plural collection of pages.
Oh yep, not sure what I was thinking there.
It's a British thing, like how they say aluminum with an extra i
...You mean the correct way to say "aluminium." Whose this aloominum fellow? I don't know him.
Don't tell me you also say "mischievEEous" and "drorring" or that you "go to hospital"
Nope. Australian. We just spell words correctly, then mispronounce everything in speech.