Set Higher Standards by YogiRavi

Microsoft has its own set of lingo. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot of this one.

or‧thog‧o‧nal 

1. Mathematics.

a. Also, orthographic. pertaining to or involving right angles or perpendiculars: an orthogonal projection.
b. (of a system of real functions) defined so that the integral of the product of any two different functions is zero.
c. (of a system of complex functions) defined so that the integral of the product of a function times the complex conjugate of any other function equals zero.
d. (of two vectors) having an inner product equal to zero.
e. (of a linear transformation) defined so that the length of a vector under the transformation equals the length of the original vector.
f. (of a square matrix) defined so that its product with its transpose results in the identity matrix.

2. Crystallography. referable to a rectangular set of axes.

I typically hear this when people want to avoid having to answer a hard question by saying it’s orthogonal (i.e. related but not super-relevant) to the topic at hand. It sounds very academic and sorta makes you feel dumb for bringing something up at the supposed wrong time.

It is a giant “hand-wave” over having to explain a bunch of details that would take a long time. Why bother with the details when you can just say something is orthogonal and move on? By the time people figure out what the hell you mean….you would have moved on to the 32nd topic of the meeting. People would have forgotten the original question by then…..and who really cares, it was orthogonal anyways.