Comparison

Comparison can take many distinct forms, varying by field: To compare is to bring two or more things together (physically or in contemplation) and to examine them systematically, identifying similarities and differences among them.

When consumers and others invest excessive thought into making comparisons, this can result in the problem of analysis paralysis.

The theory explains how individuals evaluate their own opinions and abilities by comparing themselves to others to reduce uncertainty in these domains, and learn how to define the self.

Either case could be made, depending on one's angle of vision, one's framework, and the conclusions towards which one intends to move.

[10]Anderson notes as an example that "[i]n the jingoist years on the eve of the First World War, when Germans and Frenchmen were encouraged to hate each other, the great Austro-Marxist theoretician Otto Bauer enjoyed baiting both sides" by comparing their similarities, "saying that contemporary Parisians and Berliners had far more in common than either had with their respective medieval ancestors".

[11] The primary use of comparison in literature is with the simile, a figure of speech that directly compares two things.

For example, 15th-century English poet John Lydgate wrote "[o]dyous of olde been comparsionis",[15] which was reflected by many later writers, such as William Shakespeare, who included the line in Much Ado About Nothing, "comparisons are odious".

[16] Miguel de Cervantes, in a passage in Don Quixote, wrote, "is it possible your pragmatical worship should not know that the comparisons made between wit and wit, courage and courage, beauty and beauty, birth and birth, are always odious and ill taken?