Visualizing how FFTs work.

A lot of scientists have performed Fast Fourier Transforms at some point, and those that haven’t, probably are going to in future, or at the very least, have read a paper using it. I’d used them for years before I ever began to think about how they algorithm actually worked. However, if you’ve ever looked it up, unless math is your first language, the explanation probably didn’t help you a lot. Normally you either get an explanation along the lines of “FFTs convert the signal from the time domain to the frequency domain” or you just get this:

X_{(k)}\ = \sum_{n=0}^{N-1} x_{(n)} \cdot e^{-2 \pi i k n / N}

However, the other day I came across an amazing explanation of the algorithm, and I really wanted to share it. While I might not be able to get you to the point that you completely understand the FFT, I think think it might seriously enhance your understanding.
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