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Blueberry comments on Virtue Ethics for Consequentialists - Less Wrong
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I sympathize with this logic, but I don't completely agree. Languages frequently take words from other languages and regularize them, and when this occurs, they are no longer inflected the way they were in the original language. When we use Latin phrases in English often enough, they become part of the English language. 'Ceteris' and 'paribus' are in the ablative case because they were taken from a particular Latin expression, so it's reasonable to keep them in that case when using the words in that context, even though they're not being used in exactly the same way.
Yes, that's a good point. Out of curiosity, I just searched for examples of similar usage in Google Books, and I'm struck by how often it can be found in what appear to be respectable printed materials. I guess I should accept that the phrase has been reanalyzed in English, just like it makes no sense to complain about, say, the use of caveat as a noun, or agenda as singular. (Though I still can't help but cringe at singular data, despite being well aware that it's a lost cause...)
Nitpick alert: You probably know this, but it's an important distinction that the non-plural usage of "data" not only is grammatically singular, but is also a mass noun. (People say "I have some data, you have more data", not *"I have one data, you have two data[s]".)
Virtually everyone who makes "data" grammatically plural actually uses it as a mass noun, too.
...so what's "datum", then? </sincerity>
Datum is the neuter singular of the perfect passive participle of the Latin verb dare "to give." This grammatical form is roughly analogous to the English participle "given." However, in Latin, such participles are sometimes used as standalone nouns, so that the neuter form datum by itself can mean "[that which is/has been] given." Analogously, the plural data can mean "[the things that are/have been] given."
In English, this word has been borrowed with the meaning of "information given" and variations on that theme (besides a few additional obscure technical meanings).
It's the singular that plural "data" is a plural of. Someone who strictly uses "data" as a mass noun would say "piece of data".