Perhaps, when solemnly visiting a giant manufacturing corporation or two, you too have observed a quality assurance "mantra" on a notice board or two, that states something like:

"If you can't measure something, you can't understand it ... if you can't understand it, you can't control it ... if you can't control it, you can't improve it."

Replace "something" and "it" with "corrosion" (and allow yourself a bit of artistic word freedom) to obtain the following basic corrosion measurement and monitoring mantra:

"If you do not measure (monitor*) corrosion, you can't understand it ... if you can't understand corrosion, you can't control it or improve your corrosion control methods."

* recognizing that corrosion monitoring is basically an organized, systematic form of corrosion measurements.

Editor's note: The above mantra seems to summarize an earlier attempt at describing the nature of corrosion monitoring.