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Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

https://globalelectionsimulator.com/brazil/

  Bolsonaro 52.26%
  Lula      47.74%

Election starts a few hours from now. We'll know the results by tonight.

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FWIW, these two datums aren't mutually exclusive.

If you have a high enough degree of certainty somebody could have a 99% chance of winning with an expected 50.1%/49.9% split. For the split to mean anything you need to know the confidence/variance.

Language is funny: where did you first encounter "datums"? Do you intend a semantic distinction from "data"?

They, I presume, intended to reference each separate datum; the first being "80% chance Bolsonaro wins" and the second being the most likely expected split.

I would guess they encountered it via a vaguely classical adjacent education or reading background, in that a (non geodesy / survey related) datum is a singular thing given, granted, assumed as fact, used in a reasoning chain.

More simply, the singular of data.

S'all Latin to me.

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