I want to thank William McKibbin for introducing me to a new word: parallax. He used it in a response to one of my recent posts and I must admit that I was forced to look up its meaning, because it was new to me. Dr. McKibbin has a blog which I frequently visit, and so am pleased that he not only reads my blog but also occasionally offers commentary.

As per dictionary.com, parallax means “the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer.” This word does fit quite well, does it not, when we speak about performance and risk? 


I have written about performance from a matter of perspective. That is, depending on one’s perspective, you may see performance differently or more importantly, have different requirements when measuring performance. The same applies to risk. Parallax is yet another way to view these phenomena, where depending on where one is standing, they are seeing things differently. 




p.s., as for “parallaxical,” I made that word up…but it works, does it not?