Counting Nonsense

I’m a sucker for counting without counting– from subitizing in kindergarten to combinatorics in grade 12.

I was recently sent the link to an education jargon generator.

The first question that came to my mind was “How many different phrases are there?” To determine the number of possibilities for a task, we multiply the number of choices for each stage of the task. Phrases are generated by stringing together a verb, adjective, and noun. There are 53 choices of verbs, 65 choices of adjectives, and 66 choices of nouns. So, there are 53 × 65 × 66 = 227 330 “finely crafted phrases of educational nonsense.”

The teacher who posted the education jargon generator writes “I would be remiss if I did not thank my district’s professional development staff for introducing me to many of these gems.” Hah!

Wait! I resemble this remark. I’ve been prepping three all-day workshops that my team and I are facilitating giving this week. While I do use many of these words individually, I hope that I get called on it if I ever string three of them together, be it in person or on this blog.