Nerding out at the 'Tute

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From a Facebook wall post and subsequent commentary.

AK:
recently described someone as a perfect Lowpass filter (this person "flattens/smears" any impulse!). I am a perfect BandReject filter (I listen and act on most stuff, unless you're in my sh!t pile). I know there are many Highpass (one... who follows the micro-trends of life) and Allpass (one ear in, the other ear out. Sounds familiar who started teaching again this semester?) My question to you is: What filter are you?

BB:
it is unfair of you to make me use my brain this early in the morning - shame on you....what would Ralph think?!?

RE:
Can I be an amplifier? I make all your impulses greater.

AK:
I think our Ralph the ceramic dog would be an All-pass filter :p

RE:
does it ever get unstable?? :p

KD:
You are a nerd.

IT:
I am a washing-machine lint filter.

MR:
This is interesting--I tend to think about people in the time domain. People have different time constants of decay in response to an impulse, and all are over, under, or critically damped. And yes, sadly, some are unstable and will explode when presented with certain stimuli. This, of course, is assuming linearity and time invariance, both of which are pretty big assumptions given the complex nature of human behavior.

CS:
It'd be nice to be a Kalman filter.

AK:
To MR: I think you're definitely not a symmetric filter (in the time-domain), because you're a COMPLEX filter... (this is getting nerdier by the minute...)
To CS: Wow... Kalman filter.. that's pretty good. I think the optimal filter would be a NON-CAUSAL Weiner... I'll buy lottery tickets all the time :D

IT:
A quote from Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" (1974):
"Personal density," Kurt Mondaugen in his Peenem... Read Moreünde office not too many steps away from here, enunciating the Law which will one day bear his name, "is directly proportional to temporal bandwidth."
"Temporal bandwidth," is the width of your present, your now. It is the familiar "[delta-] t" considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are.

RP:
I am a comb filter. I perceive the world as constantly pulsating and flanging.

MM:
You need to make this a facebook quiz :)

KD:
Clearly, you also have nerdy friends :)

LE:
I'm gonna pick butterworth filter because it reminds me of pancakes. Yummm.