Blog #2: What IS Analysis?

My definition of analysis is the attempt to break something down and study every part of that subject. It's the dis-assembly of a certain thing, letting the pieces fall into disarray out of its package, questioning every piece and in the process, learning how to piece it back to its original self. In other words, it's examining every piece of a certain whole long enough to know it inside and out.

You're supposed to take a piece of that whole and ask yourself what it is, why it exists and how and when it got there in the first place. You sit down with this little nugget of information and you think about how it relates to the other pieces waiting to be discovered and learned about. And after all of your hours or days or weeks or months or years of peering intensely through a magnifying glass, maybe, MAYBE you can put that down and MAYBE you'll be able to say you understand that thing completely.

Maybe you'll take what you were originally working with but omit a few pieces here and there. Maybe you'll piece it back together so that it's better than it was before. Maybe you change a piece or two. And when you're done you'll have put together something that is no longer something that you started with. You added your own knowledge and insight into this thing that started out without any relation to you, but in your dissection you've taken something and made it into your own. Analysis is more than just analyzing something and then putting it on the shelf. You analyze in order to understand, and with that you turn it into something unique. Something that you share with other people who are also analyzing that same thing, and you compare results. Analysis doesn't end with the full comprehension of something. You take what you learned and reinvent it into something better and new.