On widgets and doohickeys, you say? And old mother USPAP, too. What does all this mean? Well, widgets are made up of lots of doohickeys. We deconstruct that widget into its component doohickeys. Once we have them all on the workbench we have deconstructed the widget.

Is there more? Yes. Now we look at the component doohickeys. Why do they do what they do? To understand, we get another widget and reduce it, too. Maybe we get a third, a fourth, or even a tenth. But when we have reduced all the widgets to their component doohickeys, what have we discovered? Where and how all the doohickeys fit together! And once we have reassembled them properly, we have a widget!

So all this means exactly what? Old Mother USPAP, in her wisdom, chose not to define to analyze. She left us alone to our own devices. We did just that! Hooray for our side! So, what’s with the deconstruction analogy?

Comparable sales are widgets. We break them into their component doohickeys. Now we understand how the doohickeys function as part of the widget. And so it is with an appraisal. We start with the widgets of comparable sales. Then we deconstruct them. When we put the deconstructed doohickeys back together, we understand the subject widget and how it works. And in our case, what it’s worth. And what about Old Mother USPAP? She left us alone, remember? And in doing so, she left us alone to learn.

Think on all this when you consider the infinitive to analyze. It means to compare and contrast. You compare doohickeys to understand how the widgets work. Now, aren’t you glad she left us alone?