The Fourier Transform — A Primer

1 · Jeremy Kun · May 27, 2012, 7 p.m.
Summary
In our last primer we saw the Fourier series, which flushed out the notion that a periodic function can be represented as an infinite series of sines and cosines. While this is fine and dandy, and quite a powerful tool, it does not suffice for the real world. In the real world, very little is truly periodic, especially since human measurements can only record a finite period of time. Even things we wish to explore on this blog are hardly periodic (for instance, image analysis)....