> The eye opener for me is when a video about it connected the idea of the zeta function to how you might create a square wave by adding successive sine waves (

> The eye opener for me is when a video about it connected the idea of the zeta function to how you might create a square wave by adding successive sine waves (of higher and higher frequency). The process of taking an arbitrary waveform and approximating it by adding together a series of sine and/or cosine waves with different amplitudes etc is called a Fourier transform. That is what Terrence Tao is talking about when he mentions trying this approach using Fourier analysis himself. [1] Fourier transforms are used all over the place, eg the discrete cosine transform (DCT) is part of JPEG, MP3 etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_analysis