Ted, et. al.: Re: "Data is" vs "data are" ... Heh heh!
"This is the kind of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put." (Attributed to Churchill in one form or another, likely wrongly.) See here for some semi-authoritative dicussion: http://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/top-10-grammar-myths-data-is-plural-so-must-take-a-plural-verb/ Cheers, Bert Bert Gunter "The trouble with having an open mind is that people keep coming along and sticking things into it." -- Opus (aka Berkeley Breathed in his "Bloom County" comic strip ) On Sun, Jun 24, 2018 at 3:44 PM, Ted Harding <ted.hard...@wlandres.net> wrote: > On Mon, 2018-06-25 at 09:46 +1200, Rolf Turner wrote: > > Does/should one say "the degrees of freedom is defined to be" or "the > > degrees of freedom are defined to be"? > > > > Although value of "degrees of freedom" is a single number, the first > > formulation sounds very odd to my ear. > > > > I would like to call upon the collective wisdom of the R community to > > help me decide. > > > > Thanks, and my apologies for the off-topic post. > > > > cheers, > > Rolf Turner > > Interesting question, Rolf! > >From my point of view. I see "degrees of freedon" as a plural noun, > because of "degrees". But in some cases, we have only 1 degree of > freedon. Then the degrees of freedon is 1. > > But we do not say, in that case, "the degree of freedom is defined > to be", or the degree of freedom are 1" > > Nor would we say "The degrees of freedom are 19".! > > So I thonk that the solution is to encapsulate the term within > aingle quotes, so that it becomes a singular entity. Thus: > > The 'degrees of freedom' is defined to be ... "; and > The 'degrees of freedom' is 1. > Or > The degrees of freedom' is 19. > > This is not the same issue as (one of my prime hates) saying > "the data is srored in the dataframe ... ". "Data" is a > plural noun (ainguler "datum"), and I would insist on > "the data are stored ... ". The French use "une donnee" and > "les donnees"; the Germans use "ein Datum", "der Daten"; > so they know what they're doing! English-speakers mostly do not" > > Best wishes to all, > Ted. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/ > posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
