Question

Can someone give me an example of an analogy?

Answer 1

It's when you compare something to another using a reasonable example. It can be very useful for applying common knowledge to make a harder topic easier.

For instance, one might say:

• A column is to a row as the y axis is to the x axis (they are both perpendicular pairs).

• Circles are to cylinders as squares are to rectangular prisms (they are both pairs in which the former object extrudes in one axis to generate the latter object)

• Sun is to moon as day is to night (sun represents day, so moon must represent night; hence the day to night relationship makes sense).

Or a harder one:

• Electron delocalization is like when you have glasses of water with evenly distributed water. If electron density is piled up in one orbital, the energy is not as spread out and one orbital is super high energy (we call that "localized" energy). Likewise, if you take all the glasses and pour their water into one glass, it's probably going to overflow (analogous to very "localized" energy).