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An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

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Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#21
BetterExplained (Kalid Azad) has a good written article that covers the Fourier transform in a similar manner to the 3Blue1Brown video: https://betterexplained.com/articles/an-interactive-guide-to...

I have an article explaining step by step how to implement code for the discrete version of the Fourier transform: https://www.nayuki.io/page/how-to-implement-the-discrete-fou...

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#23
post #9

He touches on it - but I’d love to see an intuitive explanation of why the response of each frequency to the input function is linearly independent. i.e the fact that Fourier transform of the sum is equal to the sum of the Fourier transforms. This is “why it works” - it’s what makes the frequency space an orthonormal basis - but it’s never been intuitively obvious to me. Otherwise, there would be more than one way of…

Take your wrapping function from t1 to t2, at a frequency ƒ (signal) != Fs (sampling freq), then take the limit as t1/t2 goes to -∞/+∞. As your window gets longer, more cycles of the oscillation "cancel out", moving the center of mass towards 0+0i. This means the peak around ƒ narrows and raises. At ∞, ƒ becomes infinitely narrow and high (Dirac delta * ).

This is also why peaks on an fft are gaussian (finite window), and get sharper as the fft window is increased.

* for cosine, technically there is a peak at -ƒ too. this is because a real cosine signal is ambiguous whether it is "moving forward or backwards in time". Hence it has a peak at +/-ƒ. A complex exponetial (helix through time) has chirality due to the real and imag components, so it has a single peak at ƒ. And if you take a +ƒ (lefthanded) and -ƒ helix (righthanded) and add them, the complex part cancels out, leaving only a real "up and down" wave.

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#25
post #9

He touches on it - but I’d love to see an intuitive explanation of why the response of each frequency to the input function is linearly independent. i.e the fact that Fourier transform of the sum is equal to the sum of the Fourier transforms. This is “why it works” - it’s what makes the frequency space an orthonormal basis - but it’s never been intuitively obvious to me. Otherwise, there would be more than one way of…

The orthogonality is essentially follows from (1) integer frequency complex sinusoids have an average value of zero over [0,2π], and (2) if you multiply two distinct integer frequency complex sinusoids, you get another integer frequency complex sinusoid. I'm not sure that this is any more intuitive.

> what would be useful is to give an example of a set of functions which are not linearly independent.

See [1,2] for example, which (I believe) has applications in compressed sensing and dictionary learning.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_(linear_algebra)

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overcompleteness

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#26
Sound waves don't add up linearly. However, it is a good enough idealization for many uses.

Fourier analysis is also approachable from the discrete setting of finite vectors instead of functions, where the fourier analysis is just an orthogonal (orthonomal when sanely defined) linear function, i.e. it acts by matrix multiplication and is represented as that matrix.

This appropriately extended to the continous setting leads to the fourier transform on functions, and also gives intuition why the fourier transform uses integrals.

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#27
In fMRI data, we refer to frequency space of volumetric image data as K-Space.

I would like a general term for frequency space of a signal, without the use of the word `frequency` . This is because `frequency` is also used when describing histograms in general image processing, and is in general an overloaded term.

Any established words or phrases in the corpus? any tips?

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#28

In fMRI data, we refer to frequency space of volumetric image data as K-Space. I would like a general term for frequency space of a signal, without the use of the word `frequency` . This is because `frequency` is also used when describing histograms in general image processing, and is in general an overloaded term. Any established words or phrases in the corpus? any tips?

K-Space is sufficiently general, because "k" is defined as the wavenumber (2pi over wavelength). That's simply related to frequency in nearly every case unless your medium is interstellar hydrogen or shockwaves in air or something. If you need to talk about frequency specifically you could talk about the period (inversely proportional) or the angular frequency (factor of 2pi).

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#29
post #2

I think it's much easier and more direct to visualize the time-domain as superposition of helical components and the transform as an exploration of what happens when you twist the "cylinder" with varying "intensities". You avoid the vague center-of-mass spike depicted here and start from the get-go with the terms of the transform.

> I think it's much easier and more direct to visualize the time-domain as superposition of helical components and the transform as an exploration of what happens when you twist the "cylinder" with varying "intensities".

That doesn't sound very clear at all to me.

> You avoid the vague center-of-mass spike depicted here and start from the get-go with the terms of the transform.

The center-of-mass spike is the result of summing across all the different complex points/vectors, this is stated very clearly by the FT formula (sum (int_^) of points on a circle (exp(t)) amplified by signal strength (f(t))). Seems very explicit to me.

Re: An animated introduction to the Fourier Transform [video]

#30
post #9

He touches on it - but I’d love to see an intuitive explanation of why the response of each frequency to the input function is linearly independent. i.e the fact that Fourier transform of the sum is equal to the sum of the Fourier transforms. This is “why it works” - it’s what makes the frequency space an orthonormal basis - but it’s never been intuitively obvious to me. Otherwise, there would be more than one way of…

The orthogonality is essentially follows from (1) integer frequency complex sinusoids have an average value of zero over [0,2π], and (2) if you multiply two distinct integer frequency complex sinusoids, you get another integer frequency complex sinusoid. I'm not sure that this is any more intuitive. > what would be useful is to give an example of a set of functions which are not linearly independent. See [1,2] for ex…

>The orthogonality is essentially follows from (1) integer frequency complex sinusoids have an average value of zero over [0,2π], and (2) if you multiply two distinct integer frequency complex sinusoids, you get another integer frequency complex sinusoid. I'm not sure that this is any more intuitive.

i think these kinds of explanations are hilariously pointless. and i don't mean to disparage because you're just trying to answer op's question but all you've done is restated the proof in english - i.e. of course it follows from that because what you've just said is the inner product of basis functions is 0. well yes of course that's definition of orthogonal.

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