#johntukey — Public Fediverse posts

John Tukey the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) inventor, who coined both "bit" and "software" died exactly 26 years ago today.

The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), one of the most important algorithms in signal processing and data analysis, was introduced by Tukey & Cooley in 1965.

In 1805, Gauss - studying the orbits of asteroids Pallas and Juno - came up with a method to interpolate their trajectories from discrete samples. What he came up with was mathematically very close to the modern FFT but Gauss never published that work, and didn’t analyze its computational complexity. It predated even Fourier’s 1822 work on heat diffusion - but without the framing or generalization that Cooley & Tukey would bring 160 years later.

In 1965, Cooley & Tukey published their now-famous algorithm that reduced the cost of computing a Discrete Fourier Transform from 𝑂(𝑛²) to 𝑂(𝑛 log⁡𝑛). This leap made real-time signal processing and digital media compression feasible.

From radio telescopes to JPEGs, from audio codecs to quantum mechanics - the FFT is everywhere. It’s one of the most important (and elegant) algorithms of the 20th century - rooted in the genius of Gauss, but brought to life in the computer age.

#JohnTukey #FastFourierTransform #FFT #SignalProcessing #ComputerScience #Mathematics #Algorithm #DataScience #DigitalSignalProcessing #FourierTransform #ComputationalScience #ScientificComputing #HistoryOfScience #Innovation #CarlFriedrichGauss #JosephFourier #JamesCooley #STEM #Engineering #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #QuantumComputing #ImageProcessing #AudioProcessing #Statistics #TechHistory #Computing #Science #InnovationLegacy #OnThisDay

9) As AE Berthoff says, "form finds form":

DEFINITION = GENUS + DIFFERENCE (Aristotle)
DEFINITION = BODY + SOUL (Andrew Marvell)
SENSE = GENERAL + PARTICULAR (Ivor A. Richards)
DATA = FIT + RESIDUAL (John Tukey)
DATA = SMOOTH + ROUGH (John Tukey)
DATA = BASELINE + CORRECTED (Baseline correction methods)
VARIATION = COMMON CAUSE + SPECIAL CAUSE (Walter A. Shewhart)

#IvorARichards #Meaning #General #Particular #Data #JohnTukey #Aristotle #Deming #Definition #Body #Soul #Variation #DataAnalysis

6) According to Andrew Marvell (Late Disingenuous Discourse, 1678)

DEFINITION = BODY + SOUL, or
DEFINITION = GENUS + DIFFERENCE

“Definition always consists, as being a dialectical animal, of a body which is the genus, and a difference, which is the soul of the thing defined.”

#IvorARichards #Semantics #WordSense #Meaning #General #Particular #Data #JohnTukey #AndrewMarvell

5) "Residuals are our main tool in going further. They are to the data analyst what powerful magnifying glasses, sensitive chemical tests for bloodstains, and delicate listening devices are to a story-book detective. They permeate all sorts of data analysis and appear in many guises. (...)"

#IvorARichards #Semantics #WordSense #Meaning #General #Particular #Data #JohnTukey

What can #Rhetoric teach us about #DataAnalysis?

4) According to John Tukey (Exploratory Data Analysis):

DATA = FIT + RESIDUAL
DATA = SMOOTH + ROUGH

"Here the fit is our current description --always incomplete, always approximate–of the overall behavior of the data. Each individual observation is split up into a sum of this fit and what is left over, called a residual. (...)"

#IvorARichards #Semantics #WordSense #Meaning #General #Particular #Data #JohnTukey

3) "But on the way to this we must take all the care we can to consider separately what each of these senses is, which together form the word’s range. This master rule applies to all words whatever.”

#IvorARichards #Semantics #WordSense #Meaning #General #Particular #Data #JohnTukey

2) "Later, after studying the various senses, we may go on to plot the word’s range and ask if anything is common to its senses, and if so what. A knowledge of the patterns of these rangings is—I have insisted—the most valuable thing we can learn from the inquiry, for it is knowledge of the make-up of the universe including our own."

#IvorARichards #Semantics #WordSense #Meaning #General #Particular #Data #JohnTukey

What can #Rhetoric teach us about #DataAnalysis?

On the primacy of a #SOUL...

1) According to Ivor A. Richards ("How to read a page"):

SENSE = GENERAL + PARTICULAR

"So we come back to a master rule of method: It is the sense of a word in a particular use which we have to consider first, not the general meaning, “the wide range of all its senses taken together,” nor something we may suppose is common to them all. (...)"

#IvorARichards #Semantics #WordSense #Meaning #Data #JohnTukey