orthonormal comments on This is your brain on ambiguity - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Morendil 28 May 2010 03:47PM

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Comment author: orthonormal 30 May 2010 03:13:01AM 3 points [-]

Some problems turn out to be easier to solve in a domain which is the dual of that where they were originally formulated. Unfortunately, my math having gone rusty for quite a while, I don't recall offhand any examples that I feel familiar enough with to discuss here

It's a little advanced, but I like Fourier's solution to the heat equation: any function satisfying certain properties can be thought of as a sum of waves (frequency being dual to position), and the heat equation is easy to solve if your initial data is such a wave. Constructing the solution from this perspective leads us to the heat kernel, which can be calculated without even breaking the function into waves in the first place!