Down with Delta
“Delta” and “Change” are used synonymously in business meetings—usually by men who work in the finance department but occasionally by other people who interact with the finance department too often. The reason they say “delta” is that a delta is used to represent change in mathematical equations as easy Greek shorthand. However, said out loud in a meeting, “delta” has just as many syllables as “change,” so loses any utility as a shorthand. Instead, it serves as an insider signal while making routine business meetings more obtuse for people that aren’t familiar with business school vocabulary.
I majored in Economics, with a focus on econometrics and statistics, and lived with a math major, two physics majors, and a computer science/double match major throughout college. Most of us now work in data science or software engineering, and one of us is a literal rocket scientist. All that is to say that we are extremely math literate, work in highly technical/quantitive disciplines, and talk a lot about quantitative or scientific subjects. And none of use the word “delta” in conversation when we mean change.
In fact what I’ve noticed is that the people using “delta” most often actually don’t have technical backgrounds. They tend to come from business school or consulting backgrounds, work in strategy or finance, and spend most of their day identifying fairly inane patterns in data (“have you noticed the delta in [some fairly obvious pattern described entirely by seasonality] this month?”). I think many of them would like to be thought of as quantitative or math-y and use “delta” because the professor in their one business statistics class used it. However, all this really accomplishes is a type of cultural signaling that indicates you went to business school/associate with people who do.
Math is about simplicity—about taking a complex problem and breaking it down into simple component parts. In doing so, it uses logical and symbolic systems to help simplify and clarify otherwise obtuse documentation. The symbol for Delta is the perfect example of this, with an elegant triangle to indicate change in an equation. However, used verbally in a business meaning, “delta” does the exact opposite; it adds complication to an otherwise perfectly simple sentence.
