Data is, um, are, datum is, oh boy!

I think that the battle over keeping datum singular and data plural has been lost. However, many would disagree. This recent press release from the University of British Columbia wants data to be plural, but in this section... well, I'm not quite sure what is going on.

“Publicly funded science generates an extraordinary amount of data each year,” says Tim Vines, a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia. “Much of these data are unique to a time and place, and is thus irreplaceable, and many other datasets are expensive to regenerate.
“The current system of leaving data with authors means that almost all of it is lost over time, unavailable for validation of the original results or to use for entirely new purposes.”

I suspect that the quote from Vines started with data being singular - "Much of this data" etc - but that someone changed bits of it into the plural. How "Much of this data are" can be correct with "is irreplacable" escapes me. The second paragraph has a similar confusion.

Peak time

Still on the subject of time, in a recent edition of the Infinite Monkey Cage, I was surprised to hear Professor Brian Cox say "counter-clockwise", since I had taken it to be a term from US English. I assumed that it was because he must have spent no little time in the US, and presumably reads a lot of US literature. When I looked at the relative frequencies of "counter-clockwise" and "anti-clockwise" in the Google ngram viewer, I noticed something surprising:

Here's the chart for UK English - a closer battle than I would have expected, but with anti-clockwise just keeping a lead. However, there is a distinct peak in the 1940s, since when the use of both terms has been on the decline.

The peak is even more pronounced in American English. Counter-clockwise wins comfortably, but since 1940 has been in decline.

Why should this be? Perhaps as more stuff has been displayed digitally, and we are less in touch with making and repairing things by hand, the words for rotating something one way or the other are falling out of fashion.

This seems to be supported by a search for "clockwise", which is suffering a similar, if less marked, decline:

American English

British English

Finally, although I won't include the graphs, mentions of the pre-clock words "sunwise" (ie, clockwise) and particularly "widdershins" (ie, anti-clockwise) have tended to grow over the same period. I have no idea why.

The time seller

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography does a regular podcast, which every fortnight, as well as the famous, covers more obscure British lives.

The latest edition featured Ruth Belville, also know as the Greenwich Time Lady, who sold time. Although chronometers were becoming increasingly accurate, their makers were desperate to know the correct time, but had no way of finding it out. They used to go up to Greenwich Observatory to find out what it was, but the Astronomer Royal, Sir George Biddell Airy, got fed up of them interrupting work, and asked his deputy, John Henry Belville, to set up the time selling service. The business became a family affair, run by John Henry, then his widow, then his daughter Ruth.

Incredibly, it continued for more than 100 years, only ending in 1940 when Ruth was 86 and her age, and the effects of World War II, finally forced her to retire. I love finding these hidden corners of life.

Don't sell dishwashers in Shanghai

If you are considering setting up a business to sell dishwashers in Shanghai, think again. The latest PISA results show that children living in Shanghai, and who have a dishwasher in their home, do worse on their reading scores than their peers.

This bucks the trend for the rest of the OECD countries covered by the report. Everywhere else, if you have a dishwasher at home your reading scores will be higher.

Given the enthusiasm for education in Shanghai, it seems unlikely that you would be able to make a success of a dishwasher business (unless your market is people who don't have, and don't want, kids). So, basically, set up your business somewhere else. You're welcome.

If you want a serious explanation, I suggest that in the UK and elsewhere homes with dishwashers are likely to be those of reasonably well-off people, whose children will be better at reading. The difference in Singapore is small (although it is still there, even with error bars). Maybe they are so rich that they have servants who do the dishwashing, so the people with dishwashers are actually poorer than the rest. I don't care, I just like the fact that data can show stupid things.

Christmas morning

Greg Lake's song, I Believe in Father Christmas, is one that I don't particularly care for, but it is difficult to avoid at this time of year. It contains this slightly odd verse.

And I believed in Father Christmas And I looked to the sky with excited eyes Then I woke with a yawn In the first light of dawn And I saw him and through his disguise 

This morning the first light of dawn was about 7.30am, and that was outside on a reasonably clear day. In a bedroom with curtains, I would think it would come a bit later. Sunrise on Christmas Day is 8.05am in London, and later in the North. So my questions are:

1. What sort of child wakes up as late as 7.30am on Christmas morning (even though he was up late watching the sky with excited eyes)?
2. What sort of Father Christmas is still putting out the presents at 7.30am?

Is it spam or just really bad marketing?

A series of emails have been arriving that I assume are spam. The thing is, they are a bit different.

Firstly, they are mostly promoting reputable companies, such as Laithwaite's, Ladbrokes, The Sun, NatWest, Anglian Home Improvements, and Match.com. OK, there is some PPI/debt management nonsense, but most of it seems fairly respectable.

Secondly, the offers are all fairly dull. They don't offer miracle cures for personal problems, or pretend that you have won the lottery – they are simply dull things like 0% on balance transfers, or a £10 Tesco voucher for taking out a subscription.

One offer arrived recently for The Sun – ", join Sun+ today for a 10 Tesco voucher" was the subject, so the weird punctuation makes you wonder if something is not quite right (a lot of them seem to have that rogue comma at the beginning). The Sun does make that offer

so that seems genuine. Picking sample phrases and googling them (such as the terms and conditions) finds similar copy on The Sun's website. But there are a couple of very odd things that make me suspicious.

Firstly, the websites used for the links are different in each email and are bizarre, although also, frankly, quite funny – teensy neutrinos, prominences penny frog, council absent jester, mellow connotation, and so on.

Secondly, they all come with an address in Florida at the bottom – 7862 W. Irlo Bronson Highway Suite #313 Kissimmee, FL 34747, which seems to be associated with a company that owns at least 500 domains.

And at that point, my interest begins to fade. Except to wonder what the business model is. Is it to make spam that is almost identical to the boring and dull messages we get from regular companies? In the past spammers have concentrated on exciting, sexy or alarming messages, but now they realise that we are suspicious of those, they're copying the dull marketing messages of normal companies, which do work, after all. I'm guessing that, unfortunately, it will also make them harder to spot. As I've written before, though, if spammers got their grammar sorted out, then we would be in real trouble.

CON - Artists

I don't know if this proposal for the Intellectual Property Office's 2013 Fast Forward Competition was real or a piece of performance art (ie, the proposal was a piece of performance art, as opposed to the show they were proposing). Either way, unfortunately it didn't get funded.

CON - Artists [Copyright Owners Network - Artists]

This Coventry School of Art and Design show delivers an entertaining look at the complex world of copyright, taking a look at its early conception, through to the rapidly changing digital world encountered today. The outcome will be a UK business and academic sector well informed of the importance of copyright in the global economy, and to face the issues head on.

The audience will be left with an understanding of the duration, scope, limitations, economic and moral rights associated with this unregistered form of IP and its importance to our economy. It is designed for this generation, born into a global information rich society, where click copying is a way of life. Copyright will be seen throughout [sic] this kaleidoscope of dance, music, literature, film, photography and mime, made by our creative industry, for the entire nation.

Nasty road accident

Upset by this accident I saw on the way to work – a multi-pack of Twix had been run over. Difficult to say from the mangled wreckage what had happened, but it looks like at least a pack of nine, and possibly as many as 12. Tragic loss.