Hey! Who Put This Venn Diagram In My Pudding?

 

Next to the overuse of the word “like,” the most irksome trend in modern English usage has to be, in my opinion, the phrase “the proof is in the pudding.” It may be a case of confirmation bias on my part, but this idiotic phrase appears to be everywhere. The original version, which dates back at least to 1605, has the virtue of actually making sense: the proof of the pudding is in the eating, meaning that the cooks can argue about the proper way of making a pudding all they want – the true test will come when the dish is actually consumed.

So, how did the highly irksome version of this saying come into existence? I could find no authoritative analysis, though the consensus appears to be that the original was shortened to “the proof of the pudding,” which was then mis-heard or mis-applied into its grating iteration. I mean, seriously, would those who use this phrase simply stop and think about it for just a moment? When I took a college-level course in logic, the only “proofs” the professor was interested in was the depiction of the premises and conclusions of an argument in a Venn Diagram. Okay, so if the “proof is in the pudding,” did somebody put a Venn Diagram into the pudding prior to its being set? And, if so, wouldn’t it be hard to read afterwards? In my book, the use of the idiotic version of this phrase automatically renders whatever the writer has to say highly suspect, if not entirely worthless.

Virtue Signaling? No, this is Stupid-Signaling

Think I’m ranting (again)? Consider the real-life example I’ll pull from when I was instructing new, usually young Project Controllers in the art and science of cost and schedule performance systems. Just prior to the module on preparing the Variance Analysis Report (VAR), I would stop the presentation and walk over to the classroom’s white board, and write the word “his.” I would then call on one of the students, and ask them to read what I had written. After receiving the answer, I would ask, “Is this misspelled?”

“No.”

I would then write the word “hers,” and call on another student with the same two questions. I would continue in this vein with “ours” and “theirs,” each time receiving the same answer to the question “Is this misspelled?”

I would then write “Its,” and the classroom would usually laugh a little, realizing where I was going with this.

“You laugh,” I would respond, “but I will guarantee that, if I were to perform a quality check on everybody’s VARs one year from now, I will find at least one instance of ‘it’s’ being used instead of the real impersonal possessive pronoun. For the record, ‘it’s’ is a contraction of ‘it is,’ which is something most people are supposed to learn by fifth grade, at the latest. It may seem trivial, but I will also guarantee that, if your customer sees this error in your VARs, they won’t be impressed with your analytical or reporting ability. In fact, they’re likely to think whatever you have written to be highly suspect, so, please don’t make this error.”

Back in the Project Management world…

…we have to deal with quite a few very basic errors in assumptions about management science that are similarly entrenched in the common business consciousness, but just as infuriatingly wrong, and irksomely so. Take the very basic definition of the term “cost variance.” According to many websites (I’ll pick on Study.com[i]), a cost variance is “the differences between the planned budget and what was actually spent.”

Ummm, no, it’s not (see how easy it is to use to “it’s” correctly?).

A Cost Variance, as any certified PM readily knows, is the difference between the Earned Value and the Actual Costs. A Schedule Variance is the difference between the Earned Value and the budget, or “planned budget.” In reality, comparing the budget to the actuals, as commonplace an “analysis” as that is, is virtually worthless. Consider the following payoff grid:

In half of the possible outcomes, comparing budgets to actual costs returns the right answer, but only coincidentally so. However, in the other half of the instances where such a comparison returns bad information, one of those outcomes would lead you to a false sense of security, or project well-being, when the opposite perception is called for. And even if you don’t become lax with your decision-making, real problems are going unaddressed, which usually leads to them becoming large (or even fatal) ones. You’re almost literally better off flipping a coin, and making decisions based on that outcome.

And that, perhaps, is the greatest benefit of a certification. It transmits to potential employers and customers that its holder knows the valid versions of common management analysis techniques, and will eschew the more popular, but irksome versions.

And knows how to spell the impersonal possessive pronoun.

And never says “the proof is in …”, well, you know.

[i] Retrieved from http://study.com/academy/lesson/cost-variance-definition-formula-analysis.html on 16 July 2017, at 11:29 MDT.