- #1
leright
- 1,318
- 19
So I was having a conversation with the guy I share an office with and I brought up the gaussian distribution to show the probability distribution of energies of electrons generated by a filament. He mentioned that it 'looks like a sine wave', and I said 'sorta, but it's not a sine wave'. He said that everything in nature behaves like a sine wave and then I replied that exponentials with imaginary arguments are sine waves, but a gaussian distribution isn't really like a sine wave.
So, is there any truth to my office mate's argument, or is it irrelevant or incorrect to even bring it up?
I suppose all functions can be described by an infinite sum of sines and cosines of a spectrum of frequencies and phases angles using Fourier transforms even if the function isn't periodic, but I can't conclude that this means all functions behave like sines and cosines.
Maybe I am just not understanding his argument. It was probably a waste of time to et into an argument about in the first place, but I thought I'd get your opinion.
So, is there any truth to my office mate's argument, or is it irrelevant or incorrect to even bring it up?
I suppose all functions can be described by an infinite sum of sines and cosines of a spectrum of frequencies and phases angles using Fourier transforms even if the function isn't periodic, but I can't conclude that this means all functions behave like sines and cosines.
Maybe I am just not understanding his argument. It was probably a waste of time to et into an argument about in the first place, but I thought I'd get your opinion.