https://reddit.com/r/space/comments/f4l2jv/_/fhrgh2r/?context=1
An explanation of the whole comment would be great. I tried to look up Fourier transform on Wikipedia but it was a lot of math.
In: Mathematics
Say you want to draw a circle but only have rectangles. So you draw a single square, and it’s pretty far from the circle you want. You draw additional rectangles filling the area left between the square and the circle, and it’s still a lot of edges, but closer to the circle now. You draw more and more rectangles getting smaller and smaller, and it gets closer to the circle every time. So that’s essentially digitization : you want to model something analog, but only have one and zeroes. The more of those you have, the closer you get. At one point, you’re still not perfect, but the difference doesn’t matter anymore.
One more thing you can do is not only draw the rectangles, but find a formula to describe how the series of rectangles would need to look. That means, you don’t end up with an actual circle, but with a formula describing how to get as close to it as you want. The more iterations you calculate of this formula, the better its results represents the circle.
Determining this formula is what the Fourier Transform does for waves (ie signals).
Latest Answers