In this episode, we consider how engineers deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and risk.
Carmen would be willing to take a 50/50 shot at $1001 tomorrow over a certain $500 today. Most people are risk-averse when dealing with gains, and would take the sure money.
According to the article “The Five Neglects: Risks Gone Amiss,” (Berger, Brown, Kousky, and Zeckhauser, 2009) rational decision-making is a difficult process. It requires accurate estimations of probability, correct valuation of potential benefits, proper use of statistics, consideration of all available alternatives, and evaluation of external effects.
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Adam was a bit confused when he first encountered the term “CatEx,” which is short for “Categorical Exclusion.”
It is noted by Carmen that ambiguity in problem definition is sometimes a good thing, as it allows him flexibility in investigating possible solutions.
A 1993 article titled “Choice over Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Technical Problem Solving” (pdf) considers how engineers might change their problem-solving approach based on the relative levels of risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity.
In the previous episode titled “Value,” guest James Travelyan talked about engineers not feeling like they were being productive unless they were carrying out computations, or making design decisions.
We talk about context and learning with Chris Gammell, founder of the Contextual Electronics series of instructional videos.
Adam’s favorite lab course in school was Bituminous Materials, which investigated the properties and characteristics of asphalt.
Our guest, Chris Gammell, recently tweeted about Christmas Ale from the Great Lakes Brewing Company, and we inquire about his affection for this particular beer.
Chris took a few photos inside the brewery during a recent tour:
Chris has recently launched a venture, Contextual Electronics, which aims to teach practical skills to those interested in electronics.
An interactive teaching method, known as Peer Instruction, was created by Harvard Physics professor Eric Mazur to overcome the difficulty that experts have in teaching concepts to beginners.
A book titled How to Teach Adults provided our guest with some insights about how to organize his instructional material.
Chris surveyed listeners of The Amp Hour podcast to determine what subject matter should be included in his instructional videos.
An introductory video program titled Getting to Blinky is available on the Contextual Electronics YouTube channel.
Chris is quite pleased with his experiences using Vimeo for video distribution. He has already produced 150 videos for his instructional program.
On a monthly basis, Chris gets together with the Charged Conversation group, comprised of electronics professionals from the Cleveland, Ohio area.
One of our guest’s sources for marketing ideas is Seth Godin, who often talks about the power of story-telling.
A project dedicated to creating all the tools needed to build a small village is Open Source Ecology.
More information about Chris’s instructional program is available on the Contextual Electronics website.
You can follow Chris on Twitter as @Chris_Gammell, and can listen to his weekly podcast with Dave Jones at The Amp Hour.
Thanks to Chris Gammel for allowing us to use a screen grab from one of his introductory videos as the main image for this episode. Podcast theme music provided by Paul Stevenson
Guest Erica Lee Garcia explains the role of process improvement tools such as Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and Statistical Process Control in this episode of The Engineering Commons podcast.
Although process improvement tools are widely used in manufacturing, not all engineers are familiar with their usage.
Our guest is Erica Lee Garcia, a Professional Engineer from Canada, who is also the owner and CEO of Erica Lee Consulting.
One might have expected Erica to go into civil or mechanical engineering based on her childhood activities.
Erica majored in Materials and Metallurgical Engineering at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
Our guest started her career working for a firm that produced powdered metal products.
Kaizen refers to a philosophy focused on continuous process improvement. The term has recently come to mean a concentrated effort in dealing with a particular issue over a short period of time; such an activity may also be referred to as a “kaizen blitz” or “kaizen event.”
Dr. Jeffrey Liker, a professor of industrial engineering from the University of Michigan, published The Toyota Way in 2003. The book details 14 principles that provide the framework for Toyota’s continual improvement system.
Jeff notes that the 2007 financial crisis has been partially blamed on fat-tailed distributions that were distinctly different from assumed Gaussian probabilities.
Erica mentions a video presentation by Dan Milstein talking about the 5 Whys, a tool used in process improvement to determine cause and effect relationships.
Brian inquires about the minimum production volumes required to justify initiating a continuous improvement project.
Jeff raises the notion that Six Sigma may kill innovation. That position is refuted by Erica, who notes that there is a method of Design for Six Sigma.
Advice for early- and mid-career engineers is provided by Erica on her website, EngineerYourLife.net.
Marc Garneau is a Candadian engineer, astronaut, and politician.
Brian comments that engineering is a “world of niches,” in which engineers often have radically different duties and assignments, even if working in the same discipline, or for the same company.
Erica can be found on Twitter as @engineeryrlife. She can also be contacted via her website.
Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the graph of a normal distribution probability density function. Podcast theme music provided by Paul Stevenson
In this episode, we consider how engineers deal with ambiguity, uncertainty, and risk.
