(no subject)
Saw a talk by this guy Denis Pelli who did some neat research in the mid 90s about reading texts in the face of noise. Now while it makes perfect sense that a letter shape should have a somewhat localized fourier spectrum --- to someone who knows what a fourier transform is --- it's possible to get across the point with just one lovely image:
Opacity of the letters varies up and down, and spatial frequency of noise varies right and left. You can read letters on the left and right sides --- where the noise is either very high or low frequency --- but in the middle you can't.
Anyway, the talk was only so-so. The guy didn't talk particularly slowly but it felt like the rate of communication was sloooow slow slow. The audience questions got kind of out of hand, too.
Opacity of the letters varies up and down, and spatial frequency of noise varies right and left. You can read letters on the left and right sides --- where the noise is either very high or low frequency --- but in the middle you can't.
Anyway, the talk was only so-so. The guy didn't talk particularly slowly but it felt like the rate of communication was sloooow slow slow. The audience questions got kind of out of hand, too.
