Is Science the Sum of All Knowledge - Video

Not so High on High-Resolution

Like many people in this industry, I love technology. Working for Tektronix, I am excited when we are the first to introduce new technology, like the Tektronix MDO4000 Mixed-Domain Oscilloscope. But I am also interested to innovation from other test and measurement suppliers. 

Last year, Teledyne LeCroy introduced the WaveRunner HRO, or High-Resolution Oscilloscope. They rebranded it this year as the HDO, or High-Definition Oscilloscope. The idea is to use a 12-bit digitizer instead of an 8-bit digitizer to acquire a waveform. With an 8-bit digitizer, there are 256 voltage levels that define the wave shape. In theory, 12-bits means that there are 4096 distinct voltage levels, a great improvement in resolution. More recently, Agilent introduced the DSO9000H, a competing product that also promises 12-bits of performance through oversampling and processing. Such an oscilloscope should allow you to see small signals in the presence of big ones, provide greater accuracy of DC gain, and less noise on a signal.

So why doesn’t Tektronix provide a 12-bit oscilloscope? Aren’t more bits always better? Let’s review.

Graduation Address - Is Science the Sum of All Knowledge?

 Transcript of Joel Avrunin's Address to the Undergraduate and Graduate Students at
Towson University's 148th Commencement Exercise

January 6, 2013 Commencement - 10 AM - Towson Center Arena

Graduation from University of Baltimore / Towson University Joint MBA Program        

    
      Thank You Lisa Jackson our GSA president for that introduction. Good morning President Loeschke, distinguished guests, honored faculty, family and fellow graduates.  With my undergraduate degree in engineering, I sought to answer the question, “Is science the sum of all knowledge?”  Society accepts that if you learn the science behind a system, you are now an expert who can tackle any problem.  With that mindset, I started at Towson to become an expert in business, specifically wanting to know how to manage organizational change.  If science truly is the sum of all knowledge, then just as an expert in the science of engineering can design, an expert in the science of business should be able to manage.  I foresaw going to class and learning the skills needed to not only motivate employees and monitor their productivity, but also to be an expert in all aspects of the business.  My course schedule certainly read that way – finance, project management, marketing, and accounting.  And yet it was in an economics course that I read the prescient words of Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek who asserted that the knowledge of the circumstances of time and place were more important than all of the science we can learn.  Hayek teaches us that since a manager cannot be at every decision point, he must empower those he employs to make decisions on their own.  He teaches that the further removed a decision maker is from the point of knowledge, the slower an organization will be able to adapt to change.  But if the key to management is to be hands-off, then why go to business school at all – what is the role of a manager?