AW: Harmonix content formula

[Martin Czech]

> -how weird that i've just returned home from an engineering final that
> covered Fourier analysis (i think i screwed that problem up, incidentally..
> finding the fourier transform of a complicated funciton by hand without a
> calculator is a pain in the ass, man).. and here everyone is talking fourier
> theory.. but anyway, i think he had yet another name.. ah, yes, i have here
> in "Circuits" by A. Bruce Carlson on page 546 that his full name was Jean
> Baptiste Joseph Fourier :]
> 
Well, yes pain, but if you can get an analytical result for a problem
this is of much more value then a numerical solution.
E.g. the spectra for PWM pulses can be given with just one formula,
on the numeric side you would have to compute "solutions" for
a couple of duty cycles and still you would have not all of
the information.

Sometimes numerical solvers are completely wrong (not in the FFT case).
So using numerical methods requires that you allready know how
the result will look like in order to reject wrong "solutions".


> >This was a very new way to think back then, and Fourier was under heavy
> >attack of the angry old men from the academy.
> 
> -yeah, didn't LaGrange call Fourier Series "lunacy" or "inconceivable" or
> somesuch?  also, i had the impression that Fourier himself didn't come up
> with the transform, only the series stuff, and that later people extended it
> into the Fourier transform? anyone?
> 
I only know that the basic concept is very old and Fourier seems to have
given some "shape" to it.

m.c.