Re: A better way to decimate a file??
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg21387] Re: A better way to decimate a file??
- From: "Jordan Rosenthal" <jr at ece.gatech.edu>
- Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2000 20:54:45 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta GA, USA
- References: <849j3v$pgm@smc.vnet.net> <84dmfv$2ru@smc.vnet.net> <84jorg$e12@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
Ed, Rob was using the word correctly, but you have to have the secret decoder ring. :) In the signal processing community, the word "decimate" is extremely common and has come to mean retaining every M-th sample of a sequence: y[n] = x[M*n] Another word, "downsampling", is sometimes used for this operation as well (although some definitions for "downsampling" require that the sequence be lowpass filtered first). I guess the word "decimate" can be considered technical jargon which, as you pointed out, has strayed slightly from its original meaning. - Jordan "Ed McBride" <emcbride at wybron.com> wrote in message news:84jorg$e12 at smc.vnet.net... > > > > "Rob Peterson" <rob-piovere at swbell.net> wrote in message > > news:849j3v$pgm at smc.vnet.net... > > > I start with a list y that I need to decimate (sp?). I've looked thru > > > the book and the only list function I can find to dump list elements > > > is the Drop[] function. But, the best I can do is get rid of half of > > > the elements at a time. I want to decimate this list by 16, ie I want > > > to dump 15 of every 16 entries. > > Don't mean to be anal-retentive, but the English language is something I > care about. Decimate comes from the Latin, meaning literally to kill > every tenth man, a punishment meted out to Roman Legions that showed > cowardice, or something else regarded as unacceptable. Yes, things were > definitely tough back then, but the Romans did conquer most of the known > world, so... Anyway, the word can be used loosely to mean inflict heavy > casualties, but I think "killing" 15 out of 16 is a bit too much. Ed > McBride, P.E. >