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Benford's law solved with DSP

Steve Smith February 22, 20087 comments

I have a longtime interest in the mystery of 1/f noise. A few years ago I came across Benford’s law, another puzzle that seemed to have many of the same characteristics.

Suppose you collect a large group of seemingly random numbers, such as might appear in a newspaper or financial report. Benford’s law relates to the leading digit of each number, such as "4" in 4.268, "3" in 0.0312, and "9" in -932.34. Since there are nine possible leading digits...


Waveforms that are their own Fourier Transform

Steve Smith January 16, 200812 comments

Mea Culpa 

There are many scary things about writing a technical book. Can I make the concepts clear? It is worth the effort? Will it sell? But all of these pale compared to the biggest fear: What if I'm just plain wrong? Not being able to help someone is one thing, but leading them astray is far worse.

My book on DSP has now been published for almost ten years. I've found lots of typos, a few misstatements, and many places where the explanations confuse even me. But I have been lucky;...


An Interesting Fourier Transform - 1/f Noise

Steve Smith November 23, 200725 comments

Power law functions are common in science and engineering. A surprising property is that the Fourier transform of a power law is also a power law. But this is only the start- there are many interesting features that soon become apparent. This may even be the key to solving an 80-year mystery in physics.

It starts with the following Fourier transform:

The general form is tα ↔ ω-(α+1), where α is a constant. For example, t2 ↔...


An Interesting Fourier Transform - 1/f Noise

Steve Smith November 23, 200725 comments

Power law functions are common in science and engineering. A surprising property is that the Fourier transform of a power law is also a power law. But this is only the start- there are many interesting features that soon become apparent. This may even be the key to solving an 80-year mystery in physics.

It starts with the following Fourier transform:

The general form is tα ↔ ω-(α+1), where α is a constant. For example, t2 ↔...


Waveforms that are their own Fourier Transform

Steve Smith January 16, 200812 comments

Mea Culpa 

There are many scary things about writing a technical book. Can I make the concepts clear? It is worth the effort? Will it sell? But all of these pale compared to the biggest fear: What if I'm just plain wrong? Not being able to help someone is one thing, but leading them astray is far worse.

My book on DSP has now been published for almost ten years. I've found lots of typos, a few misstatements, and many places where the explanations confuse even me. But I have been lucky;...


Benford's law solved with DSP

Steve Smith February 22, 20087 comments

I have a longtime interest in the mystery of 1/f noise. A few years ago I came across Benford’s law, another puzzle that seemed to have many of the same characteristics.

Suppose you collect a large group of seemingly random numbers, such as might appear in a newspaper or financial report. Benford’s law relates to the leading digit of each number, such as "4" in 4.268, "3" in 0.0312, and "9" in -932.34. Since there are nine possible leading digits...