Does "blog post learning" ever really work? I have taught these kind of undergraduate subjects and, in the context of a course , the Fourier transform never struck me as something very complicated. First, it feels completely natural to write down a Fourier decomposition for periodic functions; the inverse transform to determine the coefficient is just (real or complex) calculus; and all that is left is to convince th…
The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
121–130 of 171 posts
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#122Does "blog post learning" ever really work? I have taught these kind of undergraduate subjects and, in the context of a course , the Fourier transform never struck me as something very complicated. First, it feels completely natural to write down a Fourier decomposition for periodic functions; the inverse transform to determine the coefficient is just (real or complex) calculus; and all that is left is to convince th…
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#123Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#124Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#125The last Fourier Transform explanation you will ever need.
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you lose something, you always find it in the last place you search... because why would you keep searching after you found it
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that it was a joke when people said "It's always the last place you look." Like well into my teens. But ever since I figured it out, I always look at least one more place after finding something.
I always assumed it was kind of a 'life's a bitch' aphorism
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#127As someone without a lot of math background, the most confusing part of this is k. Is k a number, like 7.45 or whatever? Or something else? Everything else is just normal mathy stuff.
You can see in the formula, that it's plugged in as the frequency of the signal the original signal is 'spun-around' with.
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#1281. I can't tell the difference between the pink and the purple in the formula. The text is fine, but the formula isn't. 2. I have no idea what "signal" means in the "spin your signal" so the single sentence explanation is completely useless to me.
This bums me out a bit because I think there's something really great here.
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#129I'm found of seeing the Fourier transform as a fancy way of changing basis / coordinates, not sure how mathematically correct is that. In high school physics some problems got way easier by redefining coordinates as x' and y', solving for those, them going back to x and y. That's what the Fourier transform does, but for functions. Looking at its formula, we can see it looks like we are projecting a function into a se…
Re: The Fourier Transform, explained in one sentence (2014)
#130Does "blog post learning" ever really work? I have taught these kind of undergraduate subjects and, in the context of a course , the Fourier transform never struck me as something very complicated. First, it feels completely natural to write down a Fourier decomposition for periodic functions; the inverse transform to determine the coefficient is just (real or complex) calculus; and all that is left is to convince th…
You're also right that explanations can't be isolated. I'd go further and say they never are. People only come to understand new things in terms of things they already understand. There's no "explaining X" in isolation, there's only "explaining X in terms of Y." A good explanation either supplies a suitable Y or makes it clear to the reader what Y they'll be relying on.
So, even if the author tries to isolate, a successful explanation always relies on collateral information. The only question is whether that collateral information is left to chance or intentionally exploited.
What's the "Y" here? Well, the author assumes the reader can make sense of phrases like "energy at a frequency", what it means to "spin your frequency around a circle", "average a bunch of points along a path", etc.
That's...a lot. I'd go so far as to say that a reader who can make sense of that probably already understands more fundamental concepts like vector spaces, bases, and Taylor Series.
And if they understand those things then there are much more straightforward explanations available!