Anecdotal Data

It was probably some time mid-Brexit campaign that I first read the social media refrain “the plural of anecdote is not data.”

It instantly stuck. In succinct and pithy terms it got at a truth that seemed both familiar and comforting. Now I had somewhere to go when confronted with evidence that challenged my opinions. I held on to it subsequently - a life raft in the choppy waters of the Fake News era.

So it was a bit unsettling when the other day I was googling to see who originally coined the phrase, and my life raft was instantly sunk.

It turns out that it was misquote. The original, from Raymond Wolfinger, says the opposite:

“The plural of anecdote is data.”

Worse still, the reason he said was to put someone just like me in their place - to tell them that they should stop viewing the world in such a simplistic and lazy way. His point was this: All we have are imperfect recordings. Using the collective term ‘data’ doesn’t change their essence, and we have a responsibility to remember that every time we base any decisions off of them. This feels a lot less comforting, but a lot more honest, to me.

Perhaps we all need to ask ourselves what anecdotes we are pluralising, and what the implications will be for the world around us when we do so.

Ref: https://blog.danwin.com/don-t-forget-the-plural-of-anecdote-is-data/