Who Is Fourier? a Mathematical Adventure

by Transnational College of Lex

In Who is Fourier? A Mathematical Adventure, the student authors take the reader along on their adventure of discovery of Fourier's wave analysis, creating a work that gradually moves from basics to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0964350408
• ISBN13: 9780964350403
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Language Research Foundation
• Length: 435 Pages
• Weight: 2.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.5" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Alice in Fourier Wonderland

This is a great book that lets you assimilate the fundamentals of Fourier transform. The way the book accomplishes it is amazing. This book brings out the utter simpilicity behind one of the most beautiful work of all time --- Fourier Transform..In simple little steps the authors introduce fourier transform, complex numbers and take a peak into vector algebra...It is a fascinating work. Recommended for all.More so for the students of Digital Signal Processing

The Best Math Book I Ever Read

This is the best math book I ever read. Before reading it I had a vague knowledge of Fourier series (that you could decompose a curve into a sum of simple sine and cosine waves) but I had no idea of the power of this method or its applications. After reading it (several times) I'm pretty well versed (or at least I talk like I am) in Fourier series, Fourier coefficients, discrete Fourier expansions, Fourier transforms and FFTs (fast Fourier transforms), certainly enough to read and understand (in a brief search of the web) applications such as finding buried landmines, identifying aircraft as friend or foe, recovering latent fingerprints, or compressing data to a fraction of the original size.What impressed me more, however, was that I understood why there are only five vowels in the English language, why an infinite vector space is equivalent to a Fourier expansion, and why Heinsenberg's uncertainty principle makes perfect intuitive sense. This book is nothing if not eclectic, and the range of topics discussed is immense.If I hadn't already studied calculus and linear algebra in college I would also, for the first time, understand differentiation, integration, vector spaces, Euler's formula, Maclaurin series and the number e, all of which are presented with unusual clarity. This book is a tour de force, a summary of almost everything that is interersting (at least to me) in mathematics.You have to get beyond certain things when you read this book. Understand that it was written by a bunch of kids and is replete with cartoon characters saying things like "Good grief!" and subbplots in which, for example, the "Non-periodic kid" sends taunting messages to the Magistrate and his constables. I found this obnoxious at first, but later I found it inspirational. If those kids could do it, I could do it. Thus inspired, I read the book three times, until I finally understood it. The Transnational College of Lex has its own theories of leaning, and it looks like they're right.I cannot recommend this book too highly, or to too many readers. Even (or perhaps especially) if you don't like mathematics, you should check it out. You'll learn something.

BSEE,MSEE,MSCS This book explains what those degrees didn't

This book is entertaining, enlightning and engaging. How many times have I encountered this subject during my studies only to go away feeling like I hadn't fully grasped it! This book will take you step by step through the math. NO steps left "for the reader". The book is clear, concise and humorous. It has made me want to get out my old math books and tackle the problems again now that I am armed with a richer understanding. Besides Fourier analysis you get bonus points with excursions into what's behind "e", "i" and Euler's formula!

"It can be shown that..."

My introduction to Fourier mathematics was as a science undergraduate - it was always disturbing to keep seeing equations introduced in FTIR and NMR texts with the apparently obligatory "it can be shown that" - but, of course, it never was "shown that". This book is filled with cartoons and simplistic explanations, but it delivers the nuts and bolts of what the basic underlying assumptions of the Fourier equation are, and you finish the book with a set of about twenty revised pages of mathematics that give you a very clear picture and solid grasp of the Fourier equation. Furthermore, you understand it so well you can even pen the mathematical derivation of the equation out in several minutes. Amazing. I give this book very high marks and more praise. And I am grateful to the authors and their editors for demystifying an arcane mathematical topic. I feel much more comfortable with spectroscopy having read it, and having now some idea of what is actually going on in the black box of the spectrophotometer. This is a wonderful book.