word meaning---vollice?????

Factual Questions
1

Okay—this really strange word came up in my business class last night. The professor (who does tend to slur some words) kept saying it and I had no idea what he was saying. My closest guess was “valance”, only that’s a curtain and totally not in context.

During break, I asked the person in front of me and she thought it was “vollice”, which doesn’t appear in any dictionaries I’ve checked.

Closest thing I can think is that it was a really poorly pronounced “volition”. He said it somewhere along the lines of “VAL-lis”.

Here’s the context–we were talking about motivation and he gave an “equation”: V (mystery word) times E (expectation)= M (motivation).

Help! Any suggestions?? I’m normally excellent w/word meanings and it’s bugging me that I can’t figure it out.

2

Velocity? I can see some sort of odd definition which could make that equation make sense…
Maybe…

3

Volition would seem to fit logically with the equation you gave. So – Volition * Expectation = Motivation

Or to use synonyms – Will * Hope = Incentive

Just a guess though. If you don’t want to ask the prof directly what he said ask him to write out the equation long hand (no one letter symbols) so you can copy it down.

4

Value?

5

I concur with Whack-a-Mole’s logic and arithmetic. :wink:

6

Maybe the prof meant to say VALIS:


VALIS (acronym of Vast Active Living Intelligence System,
   from an American film): A perturbation in the reality field
   in which a spontaneous self-monitoring negentropic vortex is
   formed, tending progressively to subsume and incorporate its
   environment into arrangements of information.  Characterized
   by quasi-consciousness, purpose, intelligence, growth and an
   armillary coherence.

				- Great Soviet Dictionary
				   Sixth Edition, 1992
				   (Phillip K. Dick)
7

“Volition” makes perfect sense, except that “VAL-lis” would be a truly terrible pronounciation…then again, the pronounciation would hardly be better if it were “velocity.”

8

No, it’s gotta be volition, not velocity. That’s what I thought he said but w/ awful pronounciation.

9

Valise - small hand luggage.

V[sub]alise[/sub] X E[sub]xpectation[/sub] = M[sub]otivation[/sub]

It’s a well known formula from the Theory of The Conservation of Vacations first proposed by I. M. Gawn.

[Edited by UncleBeer on 11-21-2001 at 11:51 AM]

10

UncleBeer, that would be truly awful pronunciation, seeing that valise is correctly pronounced “va-LEESE.” :wink:

11

It could also be value or values. There is actually something called the expectancy-value theory, which says that motivation is a function of expected outcomes and the percieved value of those outcomes. Seems to fit.

12

Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask the professor what he said?

13

Found a term, valorization, the act or action of fixing an arbitrary price. Though if that’s right, you want to be careful leaving the classroom, in case you trip over all the dropped syllables rolling around on the floor…