The Power of an Equation
This blog is based on a mathematical equation that took down a multi-billion dollar industry. But fear not, I won’t bore you with the equation. But I still hope to help explain how that equation did that. Sound impossible? But hey, didn’t Richard Feynman introduce his QED theory to the public by saying: “It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it.” So, at the risk of sounding (very) arrogant, I’ll attempt what Feynman said. The equation in question is called the Fourier transform. Jamie Condliffe wrote this awesome article explaining it. His one line non-technical description of it: “Complicated signals could be represented by simply adding up a series of far simpler ones.” That’s it. That’s all the maths we need to know for this blog! Really. That maths is the heart of the MP3 format used for music files in the digital age. Simply put, MP3 applies the Fourier transform on a music file to break the “complicated signal” (aka the son