Data is information collected for study — numbers, measurements, records. Sales data, personal data, the data shows a clear pattern.
The grammar is genuinely contested and worth knowing about. Data is the Latin plural of datum, and in scientific writing it still takes a plural verb: the data show. In ordinary and business English it is treated as uncountable and takes a singular: the data shows. Both are defensible and you will be corrected either way by somebody. Note that data is uncountable in the everyday sense, so a data is wrong — say a piece of data or a data point. And personal data has a precise legal meaning in privacy law, which is worth keeping distinct from information.
1noundataFacts and figures collected for study or reference.
“The data shows a rise in every region except one.”
synonyms: figures, statistics, information
2nouninformationInformation stored or processed by a computer.
“All the data is backed up overnight.”
3nounallowanceThe allowance of internet traffic on a mobile plan.
“I have run out of data again.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
data is collected information.
Latin data means things given — the neuter plural past participle of dare, to give. Datum is one given thing. The name reflects an old view of measurement: the world gives you the numbers and your job is to read them.
Latin
datum
English, today
data
Built from
Borrowed from Latin datum, from data. Borrowed from Latin data, nominative plural of datum (“that is given”), neuter past participle of dō (“to give”); by surface analysis, datum + -a. a doublet of date.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA