3 ms·
Ok, I see your point of how a violin can be used to "search" a solution space for the transform. I still think it would be a bit of a stretch to say the violin
by yzzxy 12y ago
Ok, I see your point of how a violin can be used to "search" a solution space for the transform. I still think it would be a bit of a stretch to say the violin performs the Fourier analysis here, as the human brain is required to do computation as part of that process.
As for the bridge, I doubt that soldiers were informed by anything other than trial and error, so I don't think they are an example of an 18th-century Fourier transform. Even when engineering on bridge resonance began it was probably focused on simpler classical standing wave calculations.
- graycat 12y agoIn the violin tuning, a human just listens to the beats. In principle, a tone deaf person could do that. So, the beats just need sensitivity to volume, amplitude modulation, not really frequency. So, the frequency stuff is in the violin, not the human.
- yzzxy 12y agoComputation is not defined by difficulty for a human. It is closer to being defined by the ability to follow a (possibly arbitrary) decision procedure. In this violin method, a human is required to follow a decision procedure, unlike in a prism or the "Harmonic Analyzer" above.
- graycat 12y agoFine, but the Fourier part is really in the violin and not in the human. Listening for beats is very old stuff in signals, and no doubt circuits and/or software are sometimes used to detect them; if so, then we can do the stuff with the beats without humans.