4 ms·
The jumble of letters Fourier says nothing about what a Fourier Transform is or does. Signalidominomorphosis, or just dominomorphosis, tells a lot more at face
by rustcleaner 1y ago
The jumble of letters Fourier says nothing about what a Fourier Transform is or does. Signalidominomorphosis, or just dominomorphosis, tells a lot more at face value than Fourier Transformation which just basically says "a transformation associated with a Fourier."
With the loss of the old liberal education, we are forgetting our words are like pictograms, compiled from meaningful components from the shoulders of classical languages and ideas. Etymology books should be as common as dictionaries!
(don't mind me, just trying to anonymously add to the dictionary)
- abdullahkhalids 1y agoOne thing that mathematicians do quite commonly is look at the same object in several different ways. The "Fourier Transform" is "Signalidominomorphosis" but it is also a linear operator on the vector space of functions, and something more complicated from the perspective of measure theory. For theoretical physicists, it plays yet a different role when applied to wave functions. The disadvantage of naming a thing using one of the things it does, is that it focuses you too much on that one use case. Giving arbitrary names actually frees you to think of the object in whatever way is useful for the problem at hand.
- mr_mitm 1y agoI don't see how your reply is related to my post, but anyway. > The jumble of letters Fourier says nothing about what a Fourier Transform is or does. Signalidominomorphosis, or just dominomorphosis, tells a lot more at face value than Fourier Transformation which just basically says "a transformation associated with a Fourier." On the contrary. The jumble of letters tells you precisely what a Fourier transform is or does after you learn what the letters mean. Telling someone "Signalidominomorphosis" does not enable them to find the Fourier transform of the double-sided exponential.