Here are two interesting and opposing gems of wisdom: a little knowledge goes a long way and knowledgeable enough to be dangerous.

In my experience, the last one more often than not is what passes on the internet for information claimed to be factual.

Recently, one of our community members emailed me with a question. He had read an ad for a cable suggesting that its practical bandwidth limit was set by its thickness. That a 22 gauge wire was only thick enough to pass 192kHz and that to go higher would require a heavier gauge.

I was thankful he reached out to me for clarification because clearly, whoever wrote the ad was confused.

Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

As engineers and teachers, we like to use analogies to explain complex issues. One of the most popular analogies used to explain electrical movement through wires is water. So it’s kind of easy to understand how someone with the water picture in their head could imagine that the more of something you need to get through a wire the bigger in diameter that wire has to be.

On some level it makes sense. Of course, on some level, it also makes sense that the sun is circling the Earth.

If you’re sensing that some piece of information isn’t making sense, it might just be that there’s a good reason for it.