Some Blog Site

I was doing some scouting ahead of the normal time of the annual baby name update, just in case they released the data early and also to see if they changed the format of the data since last year. The answer to both of those is No, in case you were wondering.

But in doing the scouting, I came across this error message from the SSA, and I appreciated the fact that someone there knows what the word “data” means so I just wanted to highlight this.

For those who don’t have strong opinions on the word “data”, what I’m appreciating here is that “data” is correctly used as a plural. The singular is, of course, “datum”. But “data” has been put into general use for long enough that people have been misusing it enough that it is generally accepted as either singular or plural. I’m guessing that person also knows the difference between “I couldn’t care less” and “I could care less”, and that is the type of person whom I want managing data.

Extra credit: explain the correct pronunciation of “data”.