Renowned physicist and bongo player Richard Feynman said “Just because you know the name of something, doesn’t mean you know anything about it.” That’s true. On the other hand it’s pretty hard to talk about something you do know something about if you don’t know the name of it!

At a recent district-level meeting, a packet of suggested (required?) mathematics terms was handed out. According to this packet, students needed to know these terms to be able to functional in mathematics. How many words do you suppose are needed to speak the language of math by the end of Grade 8? 50? 100? 200?

According the student Notebook  for Building Student Vocabulary (Marzano and Pickering, 2008) there are… STOP! Before I reveal the answer, please take a moment to participate in this simple 2-click poll at Math Evil (I couldn’t get the poll script to work properly from within this post). The “correct” answer will be given after there are enough data to make it interesting.