Lies to Children – Simplification for the sake of easy explaination

simplicityI was so close to tweeting this:

The earth & sun orbit around their combined centre of gravity. simply explanation isn’t the same as accurate, just a lot easier to explain

It even fits in 140 characters, but I don’t think it does justice to the point I wanted to make.

Michael wrote:

and I commented:

Michael replied:

I lol’d.

However, it raises a point I’d like to address, we often hear some very compelling stories about how thing are. One of those stories is about the earth orbiting the sun. If you look closely at the details, what the earth orbits is the sum total of gravitational influence in the solar system. It happens that sum total is pretty much smack bang centered on the sun, but it certainly isn’t always.

The simple story is compelling, and it may even be true for most use cases, but were I trying to calculate the trajectory of an asteroid potentially on a collision course with earth it wouldn’t be.

Likewise if Michael took my story about SaaS meaning the end of upgrades to his business it would be a very compelling and simple one. After all, someone else is managing that in a SaaS world aren’t they?

Look into the detail however and you might find things like APIs that you’re using for integration getting depreciated over time, certainly you’ll hope to find that the UI/UX changes, and so your training documentation will need updating. New functionality will come along and you may well adopt it.

Beware any simple and seemingly logical statement – especially if it comes from someone trying to sell you something.

because: