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Demystifying the Fourier Magic (acm.org)
14 points by rweba on Feb 9, 2013 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments


I am a mathematician (not that it is relevant) but honestly, "demystifying" seems a bit exaggerated for a piece of commentary which simply makes it all more complicated than it is.

If the aim is to 'abstract' it, then call it 'abstraction' but demystifying is rather far-fetched.

Yes, the Fourier transform is no more than the expression of the elements of a Hilbert space in a complete basis: get over it and move on? Is it clear? You can generalize it even more.

But honestly, as Abhyankar has been quoted saying, the real question is... "What is a polynomial?" That is the really difficult question to answer.

Sorry for the rant but titles should really be at least honest (I agree they have to be attractive but...).


When I read 'demystified', I expected something that would explain the Fourier Transform in simple terms... something like http://betterexplained.com/articles/an-interactive-guide-to-... does.




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