Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. The technique has been applied in the study of mathematics and logic since before Aristotle (384–322 B.C.), though analysis as a formal concept is a relatively recent development.
The word is from the ancient Greek ἀνάλυσις (analusis, "a breaking up", from ana- "up, throughout" and lysis "a loosening").
As a formal concept, the method has variously been ascribed to Alhazen, René Descartes (Discourse on the Method) and Galileo Galilei. It has also been ascribed to Isaac Newton, in the form of a practical method of physical discovery (which he did not name or formally describe).
Other articles related to "analysis":
... The opening of Rhapsody in Blue is written as a clarinet trill followed by a legato 17-note rising diatonic scale ... During a rehearsal, Whiteman's virtuoso clarinetist, Ross Gorman, rendered the upper portion of the scale as a captivating (and fully trombone-like) glissando Gershwin heard it and insisted that it be repeated in the performance ...
... Ged, while still a young man, is portrayed here as much wiser than in the first book ... When Tenar asks him about the scar on his face, caused by the Shadow creature that he unleashed, he replies that it is the result of his foolishness in the past - his ambition has been tempered with experience ...
... The study and analysis of surfaces involves both physical and chemical analysis techniques ... ion mass spectrometry, Dual polarization interferometry, and other surface analysis methods included in the list of materials analysis methods ... Modern physical analysis methods include scanning-tunneling microscopy (STM) and a family of methods descended from it ...
... Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA) – also Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) – "is a sub-discipline of geoinformation science devoted to (...) partitioning ... Each of these application areas has spawned separate subfields of digital image analysis, with a large collection of specialized algorithms and concepts—a ...
... Aura analysis – a technique in which supporters of the method claim that the body's aura, or energy field is analyzed Bowling analysis – a notation summarizing a cricket bowler's performance Lithic ...
Famous quotes containing the word analysis:
“The spider-mind acquires a faculty of memory, and, with it, a singular skill of analysis and synthesis, taking apart and putting together in different relations the meshes of its trap. Man had in the beginning no power of analysis or synthesis approaching that of the spider, or even of the honey-bee; but he had acute sensibility to the higher forces.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)
“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)