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This joke [https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/111511784701760258] and @AdrianRiskin’s reply [https://kolektiva.social/@AdrianRiskin/111511809273857650] got me thinking:
What •linguistic• pitfalls commonly trip up students / beginners / newcomers in software, math, and stats? I’m looking for ground-level stuff, not esoterica, e.g.:
matrix / matrices
vertex / vertices
parenthesis / parentheses
“code” is a mass noun, no plural
“data” is a mass noun when it refers to bits/bytes (but “datum” still exists in stats/science contexts, tricky one)
What else?
@inthehands media/medium; index/indices; criteria/criterion (that one especially).
@nicklockwood
YES.
I worked at a company once where we were modeling various marketing channels (print media, broadcast media, etc), and long story short, we ended up with a database + codebase where `Media` was singular…over my strenuous objections. I made a wisecrack about “pluralses” that got utterly blank looks from a full room, and it was then that I realized every one of us is truly alone in this mortal life.
@inthehands flashback to a time I worked on a codebase where we had a data type that was an array of arrays of text labels.
When dealing with the inner array it was usually referred to as "texts" (dubious but bearable), however references to the outer array were named "textss" 
@nicklockwood
Absolutely required to say all this is a Gollum voice:
“The textsssss, we loves them, our pluralses”
@inthehands oh ha ha, you beat me to it.
@nicklockwood great minds etc etc
@inthehands @nicklockwood this thread is goldsss
@inthehands I suppose I should be grateful it wasn't "textses".
