- #1
pmr
- 30
- 4
I need a good book on the Fourier transform, which I know almost noting about.
Some online sources were suggesting Bracewell's "The Fourier Transform & Its Applications." I gave it shot, but it's competely unreadable. On page 1 he throws out an internal expression and says "There, that's the Fourier transform." He gives no reasoning, motivation, or exposition. He then dives into examining the conditions under which the transform exists, how it behaves with even or odd functions, etc...
If I wanted to purposefully confuse a student who was new to mechanics I might throw out the integral expression for the tensor of inertia. I would give no motivation or reasoning. I would state by fiat that it relates to angular momentum somehow. Then I would proceed to give a rigorous proof showing why its eigenvalues are always real. The student would have no idea how to formulate the tensor from first principles, and so they wouldn't really know what it does, why its so useful, or what motivated people to discover it in the first place. They would also have no idea why its symmetric, so they wouldn't really appreciate the proof about its eigenvalues being real.
I need a book on the Fourier transform which is aware of the absurdity of the above approach. Bracewell is definitely not that book.
Some online sources were suggesting Bracewell's "The Fourier Transform & Its Applications." I gave it shot, but it's competely unreadable. On page 1 he throws out an internal expression and says "There, that's the Fourier transform." He gives no reasoning, motivation, or exposition. He then dives into examining the conditions under which the transform exists, how it behaves with even or odd functions, etc...
If I wanted to purposefully confuse a student who was new to mechanics I might throw out the integral expression for the tensor of inertia. I would give no motivation or reasoning. I would state by fiat that it relates to angular momentum somehow. Then I would proceed to give a rigorous proof showing why its eigenvalues are always real. The student would have no idea how to formulate the tensor from first principles, and so they wouldn't really know what it does, why its so useful, or what motivated people to discover it in the first place. They would also have no idea why its symmetric, so they wouldn't really appreciate the proof about its eigenvalues being real.
I need a book on the Fourier transform which is aware of the absurdity of the above approach. Bracewell is definitely not that book.