permaculture

[Toby Hemenway <toby@patternliteracy.com>]

(from a conversation on another list; might be of general interest)

A while back I saw a permie website that said there were a million PDC grads, 
and that struck me as insanely high. So I did a little arithmetic, and to get 
a million, given that the average PDC might have 25 students (I think it is 
probably less), you'd need 40,000 PDCs, or 2000 PDCs per year for the last 20 
years. I can't conceive that there's been anything like that number. 

There is a pretty standard way that mathematicians get ballpark numbers. So: 
you work upwards, and figure that in the 1980s there may have been, what, 20 
PDCs per year (I think that's generous, over the whole decade), in the 90s 
maybe 100 or 200 PDCs per year, and in the last decade, perhaps 400 per year 
(again, I think these are generous numbers), 

That yields a total of about 6000 PDCs, times 25 students, and that gives you 
150,000 PDC grads. I would consider that a maximum.

This is why when people talk about the importance of intimate, small courses, 
I get fidgety.That's terrible for 30 years. How about  PDCs in 100 
universities with 500 students in each, like a Biology 101 survey class.

Does anyone have a better handle on the numbers?

Toby
http://patternliteracy.com