"The data indicates..."

[cbenk121]

Here's a sentence I encountered in my work training today:

"The data indicates that sales are rising."

"Data", from my understanding, is plural. However, "indicates" is the singular form of "to indicate". This appears to be a subject-verb agreement error.

However, I could also see "data" being a COLLECTIVE noun, no different from "army" or "group". "The data indicate that sales are rising" sounds horrible to my ear...but that's not always a guarantee of correct grammar .

Any thoughts on this?

[cbenk121]

Never mind, brick2009 provided this explanation here (https://www.beatthegmat.com/much-singula ... 48628.html):


"Yes.. all uncountable nouns are Singular

Rules for Using Uncountable Nouns:

>Uncountable nouns only used in the singular tense.

> A or an cannot be used with uncountable nouns. "The" can be used with uncountable nouns."

So because "data" is an uncountable noun, even though it's plural, here it needs a singular verb. Hence, "the data indicates that..." is correct.