I found the very first book that ignited my interest in Physics back in 1969, it was a Russian translation of Eric M. Rogers’ book “Physics for the Inquiring mind”. I totally caught the virus of creative and critical thinking from it then. By the way, I always felt that I belong to some kind of a different ‘school’ of physics and now, after reading about Eric Rogers and his life path I understand what it was (and still is). After Trinity college he spent some time in Cavendish Lab, that’s where this style of thinking and experimenting simultaneously that I caught from him is about, the Cavendindish Lab style! Good to know where it comes from.

    Funnily enough the original book has a first page that was missing in the Russian translation, it is called: “Preliminary Problems Leading to Chapter I”. What a shame that I wasn’t able to read it then! Damn you, stupid two-faced bolshevik-pretending-to-be-physicist Arzimovich (the editor of the translation)! And sure enough the third item of the list of problems is:

3. Look up the word "data." Then write short answers to the following:
a. What is its origin?
b. Which of the following statements do you consider correct language
and which incorrect? (Where incorrect, mention reason.)
- These data were obtained by my partner.
- This data was obtained by my partner.
- This set of data was obtained by my partner.

Wow! I wish I saw it then, 50 years ago. But I didn’t. So, let’s do it now!

    In google and wikipedia we immediately find the answer to the first question:

mid 18th century: from Latin 'datum', literally ‘something given’,
neuter past participle of dare ‘give’.

It is funny that the Russian word “данные” totally carries the same meaning and even the flavour of ‘something given’… without any explanation of what it is, why and what for. Ha!

    The answer to the second question is simple, because from the dictionary we know that ‘data’ is plural. The second answer is not an English language that we know (and are still studying).

    The description of the word ‘data’ in wikipedia is as follows:

Data and information or knowledge are often used interchangeably;
however data becomes information when it is viewed in context or in
post-analysis.

It is hard to argue with this. As I said, in Russian it has exactly this flavour of out of context ‘something’, given to you by God knows who.
    But there is an interesting link in wikipedia to a page explaining this difference between ‘data’ and ‘information’ in even more detail, it is this link. Fun read if you have a spare minute. The main snippet from it is this:

Data is raw, unorganized facts that need to be processed.
Data can be something simple and seemingly random and useless
until it is organized.

When data is processed, organized, structured or presented in a
given context so as to make it useful, it is called information.

    The only (important) thing that I would like to add to this couple of sentences is, that, as always in the contemporary ‘science of imaginary arrows’ (which I will write about in another place) data is not the phenomenon or “fact” itself, it’s a record of a representation obtained through a measurement made with a tool manipulated by an observer. Excluding these very important factors from the context is unforgivable, but I guess that’s it is covered by “…when it is viewed in context…” in the definition above.

Later.