An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderEven after taking a college level signal processing course, I didn't really grok why we use sines and cosines. Any explanation of Fourier theory just starts with the idea to break up a signal into sine and cosine components. Perhaps they'd say those are the simplest, purest instantiation of a frequency. But the idea still just falls out of the sky. I believe I know now: it's because of the convolution theorem. When performing a Fourier transform, we represent the…
This is great as it doesn't just explain the basics, it also shows how they are used in MP3 and JPEG files. I always had a very vague "throws away data that's not perceived" idea of how MP3 works. With the background from this I was able to really understand the wikipedia page and found this great Ars[0] article from 2007 to cement my understanding. [0] https://arstechnica.com/features/2007/10/the-audiofile-under...
Last year discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35973408 (184 points | May 2023 | 28 comments)
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 667
- Total comments
- 75
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-01-11 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier TransformsFirst breakout | a1k0n | 230 | 22 |
| 2020-07-08 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms | sramam | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-10-30 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms | max10541 | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-11-14 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier TransformsBest thread · Latest 20+ point return | bpierre | 421 | 52 |
| 2022-02-13 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms | WayToDoor | 3 | 0 |
| 2022-05-01 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms | elasticventures | 4 | 0 |
| 2023-02-26 | Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transform | p1esk | 3 | 0 |
| 2024-06-20 | An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms | thunderbong | 2 | 1 |