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.
And the word “data” is only one word, so “data is plural”
Ok… Data are a character on Star Trek.
Wouldn’t that be a correct thing to say if Data uses singular they/them pronouns?
I guess I tend to use data as a mass noun when referring to computer data (“there’s a lot of data on that drive”) and as a regular noun when referring to data in the scientific sense (“these data show xyz”)
This is just an datum point
Anyone asked data how they identify themselves?
Data is as data does.
