Tuesday

Are you signal or noise?

I just read an interesting blog post at TR talking about signal and noise. I was attracted to the article after seeing the title because I have some background (course work) in signal processing.

The author talks about the usefulness of a certain website. However, it's usefulness may have been compromised due to fruitless discussions and straying from the main topic.

Basically, what I can apply to my life..
When I talk, am I signal or noise? Is the signal significantly stronger than the noise? Signal is something meaningful, useful and exactly what the data processor (listener) is looking for. Noise is the burdensome extraneous information that prevents the data processor from extracting the meaningful signal.

Also, this is a reason why I do not share too often. I feel like a lot of noise comes out when I try to convey a signal. Sometimes, I don't have the proper experiences or insight to contribute. Other times, the information is so jumbled in my head that I have trouble getting out a filtered signal. Hopefully, one day, I will learn to filter the data that comes out of my mouth to prevent the noise from disrupting the signal too much.

Maximize the signal-to-noise ratio.