If you do any electronics work–especially digital signal processing–you probably know that any signal can be decomposed into a bunch of sine waves. Conversely, you can generate any signal by adding up ...

In January, four MIT researchers showed off a replacement for one of the most important algorithms in computer science. Dina Katabi, Haitham Hassanieh, Piotr Indyk, and Eric Price have created a ...

As we listen to a piece of music, our ears perform a calculation. The high-pitched flutter of the flute, the middle tones of the violin, and the low hum of the double bass fill the air with pressure ...

If there's a mathematical idea that applies itself to almost everything in everyday life but is almost unknown outside the scientific world, the Fourier transform has to be the most unsung contender.

Typical spectrometers use prisms or diffraction gratings to spread light over a viewing window or digital sensor as a function of frequency. While both prisms and gratings work very well, there are a ...