Attenuation occurs when constraint is applied to reduce the effect of an action or a behavior. In the case of a signal, it may be reduced to prevent a large amount of information of one sort to crowd out the full range of the messages or damped to prevent a system from overreacting and going into a state of wild oscillation. A regulator may balance regulatory measures between those that constrain or attenuate the variety of the regulated with those that amplify the variety of.the regulator. A society may make laws and hire investigators and police to enforce them in order to keep the behavior of its citizens within prescribed limits. In management, attenuation is employed to prevent the situation being managed from overtaking the capacity of the manager to cope with it. The same rule-making behavior which amplifies the manager's variety attenuates the variety of the operations being managed. In management, attenuation may be conscious or unconscious: e.g. ignorance is an unconscious attenuator. # SOURCE Attenuate comes from a Latin word meaning to make thin. # EXAMPLES • a many to one mapping • when a culture of a virus or bacteria is weakened for use in inoculations • the exclusion of events from being reported in the paper • reduction of the channel capacity for a signal • screening messages before forwarding them # NON-EXAMPLES • an amplified signal • the establishment of irrelevant rules • the forwarding of messages without screening them • a one to one mapping • the distillation of a substance to reach a purer or stronger form # PROBABLE ERROR . Believing that action taken to attenuate the variety of a situation has been effective without verification . Choosing an ineffective means of attenuating variety . Attenuating variety unknowingly due to limits of the capacity of a communication channel # SEE Amplification; Syntegration; Transducer