Sorry, dude, but DATA is plural.....for the singular DATUM.
Spidey=fail.
This is a pet peeve of mine, glad it came up.
Data is NOT plural.
Yes, prissy academics who think they know more than they do, try to treat it as a plural, I'm well aware of that, but it makes no sense at all and for all their qualifications they are WRONG.
English is not Latin.
Its a singular mass noun like 'coal', not a plural like 'diamonds'. That's how its used, even by those who try to pretend its the latter.
Think about it.
Even the academics who claim its plural don't consistently treat it as such. Nobody ever says 'I have three data', do they? Yet if data were the plural of datum that's what you would say.
Why do we have the phrase 'data point'? If data were the plural of datum that phrase would not be needed.
Why do people not say 'a number of data'? They say 'volume of data' or 'quantity of data',, 'a lot of data', very rarely do people say 'few data'.
Even those who say its plural rarely remember to consistently treat it as such because it sounds so stupid if you do.
Have you never heard the phrases 'data mining' or 'data dredging'?
Its clearly being used as a singular mass noun, as in 'coal mining'. Nobody says 'diamonds mining', if data were plural then the phrase 'data mining' would be as silly as 'diamonds mining'.
(If data were the plural of datum then the phrase would be 'datum mining', but even academics don't seem to say that).
Oh yeah, and 'database' - if data is a plural of datum then 'database' is wrong, just as 'diamonds mine' would be. It would have to be 'datumbase'.
Seems to me that insisting that data is plural is a shibboleth, a way of signifying you are part of the academic tribe. Even if you then don't actually use it as such most of the time.