A couple of months ago The Economist in an article "The French Elite: Old School Ties" commented about graduates of the prestigious university École Nationale d'Administration (ENA): "So-called énarques, who tend to be fiercely clever and answer questions with the phrase 'There are three points,' shrug off accusations of elitism."

Responding to any question with "There are three points" is, of course, quite proper:

• The human mind can straightforwardly grasp three things and the relationships among them.
• The listener gets an instant road map, a preview of the structure of the answer, so they can pay better attention to the substance.
• The speaker has a solid framework with pre-made slots to hold, for example:
  • the details of the problem
  • the bottom-line narrow answer, and
  • the global implications of that answer.

So (with a bit of recursion) three points suffice!

(cf. TufteThoughts (2000-12-18) esp. Edward Tufte's threefold rules for giving a good presentation, ...) - ^z - 2012-05-06