Why do we care about measurement?

The IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement (I&M) Society surveyed its membership during the summer of 2003 to clarify IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Magazine's role and purpose. One prominent result was the need for tutorials on I&M. The response to our survey heavily favoured a regular feature in the magazine. Each article focuses on a different concern. Its purpose is to help folks at all levels. Some might be just getting into the discipline and wanting to learn the basics of I&M, general definitions, and common concerns. Moreover, these general areas of knowledge need to be made useful by tying together various I&M elements. Others already working in the field may want introductions to, and possibly more depth in, new and emerging areas. All of the articles are written at a level of a basic undergraduate textbook. To make them as useful as possible, we need your input. That is, we need to know how well the articles meet your needs. These tutorials aim to overcome this myopic view of development and to provide you with a bigger picture - or the systems perspective. Our hope is that understanding the system will thereby help you build more useful instruments. This first tutorial is introductory and provides a basic systems overview.