heterogeneity

Definition

The fancy academic way of saying 'things are different from each other,' because apparently 'diversity' wasn't pretentious enough. Scientists love this term when describing everything from cell populations to data sets that refuse to behave uniformly. It's what you invoke when you need to explain why your experiment results look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

Example Usage

The researcher attributed the study's inconclusive results to the heterogeneity of the sample population, which was code for 'nothing matched up.'

Source: Academic terminology

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