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What Is the Fourier Transform?

(www.quantamagazine.org)
474 points rbanffy | 1 comments | 04 Sep 25 22:11 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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anyfoo ◴[04 Sep 25 23:48 UTC] No.45133536[source]▶
If you like Fourier, you're going to love Laplace (or its discrete counterpart, the z transform).

This took me down a very fascinating and intricate rabbit hole years ago, and is still one of my favorite hobbies. Application of Fourier, Laplace, and z transforms is (famously) useful in an incredibly wide variety of fields. I mostly use it for signal processing and analog electronics.

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segfault99 ◴[05 Sep 25 02:11 UTC] No.45134360[source]▶
When I did EE, didn't have access to any kind of computer algebra system. Have 'fond' memories of taking Laplace transform transfer functions and converting to z-transform form. Expand and then re-group and factor. Used a lot of pencil, eraser and line printer fanfold paper for doing the very basic but very tedious algebra. Youngsters today don't know how lucky.. (ties onion to belt, etc., etc.)
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mkipper ◴[05 Sep 25 18:51 UTC] No.45142196[source]▶
Was this professionally or in school? I still did this in an EE program 15 years ago and I can't imagine things have changed since then. I think kids still have to do lots of ugly math in EE classes.
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1. segfault99 ◴[06 Sep 25 00:39 UTC] No.45145429[source]▶
Undergrad. Mid-late 1980s.

I wasn't making point about mathematics qua mathematics. Was thinking that if I were doing EE undergrad today, I'd use SageMath or Mathematica to crunch the mechanical algebraic manipulations involved in doing a z-transform.