DSP or signal/image/data processing jokes

Question

Some other StackExchange/StackOverflow sites are entertained with a certain level of humor or fun. What is your favorite “data analysis” cartoon? is particularly worth mentioning (IMHO) this xkcd cartoon on causality and correlation (DSP folks know what I mean):

So Is humor allowed in answers? I hope so, see for instance:

StackOverflow: What is your best programmer joke?
MathOverflow: Do good maths jokes exist
SE.Stats (Cross Validated): Statistics Jokes
SE.Stats (Cross Validated): What is your favorite “data analysis” cartoon?
SE.Maths Questions about math jokes

Humor in signal processing or image processing does exist, albeit shallow, and narrow-spread. I have encountered it first (I had zero humor before) at the ICASSP 2000 DSP humor exhibition in Istanbul, Turkey. The image below comes from Humor in DSP by EURASIP:

So I believe that we deserve some humor and joke tags and actual lightness. Go ahead!

I very much like the topic, I am wondering however if this thread is more appropriate in Meta (?). Similar to the dsp-puzzle tag, it would be nice to have a dsp-humour (?) tag. It will be challenging to formulate it as a question though ("Why are you dragging this chain?", "Have you tried pushing it?") — A_A, Jan 23 '17 at 09:37
This is an appropriate comment. I will go on digging how it is handled on other SE sites. One suggestion: turn the joke into a genuine post on the underlying DSP theory, and move it to a community wiki? — Laurent Duval, Jan 23 '17 at 09:49

Laurent Duval · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-12T17:31:10.667

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An airplane is leaving Warsaw (the capital of Poland), and gets caught in a terrible winter storm. The plane rolls, pitches and yaws. The crew is expecting the plane to crash or break up at any time. But one DSP student suddenly stands up and asks some passengers on the right aisle to move across the plane. Passengers are reluctant but the student insists. “Hurry, our fate depends on your move.” Most passengers quickly leap to the other side, and suddenly the plane stops shaking. The pilot, who had a DSP degree too, enjoys calming everybody:

"Thank you for the Poles who have moved to the left-half of the plane for stability."

Additional references:

Another visual pun (dedicated to @MarcusMuller) is this chocolet decomposition:

edited Feb 12 '17 at 17:31

answered Jan 22 '17 at 16:34

Laurent Duval

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Duplicate? Delete one or the other. :-) – Peter K. Jan 22 '17 at 16:42
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Double pole clicked at the origin I guess :) – Laurent Duval Jan 22 '17 at 16:49
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Love that chocolate decomposition! – Marcus Müller Jun 10 '17 at 20:17
I had two cakes, one primal and one dual – Laurent Duval Jun 10 '17 at 20:30

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered May 11 '17 at 17:51

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In high school math class I finally got the courage up to ask the cute and brainy girl at the front row out on a date. She just looked at me with a discouraging face and as she waved her hand face down horizontally from side to side. I asked her "What's that mean?", and she said "It's the Fourier Transform of this!" as she raised up her middle finger to me. After joining DSP.SE, I finally figured out what she was talking about.

answered May 11 '17 at 17:51

Dan Boschen

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Woof, woof, woof! – robert bristow-johnson Feb 04 '22 at 16:30

ederwander · Answer 3 · 2017-01-24T23:49:25.443

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Crazy Audio Fx ilustration lol

more:

edited Jan 24 '17 at 23:49

answered Jan 23 '17 at 14:23

ederwander

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Most 1D signals concepts illustrated in 2D. Nice – Laurent Duval Jan 23 '17 at 15:32

score 8 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 22 '17 at 19:03

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More of a terrible visual pun:

The FFTiramisu.

answered Jan 22 '17 at 19:03

Marcus Müller

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I cannot accept it for ethical purposes, but let Cookey and Turkey algorithmics gods bless you – Laurent Duval Jan 22 '17 at 19:06
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It was, indeed, blessed with deliciousness :) – Marcus Müller Jan 22 '17 at 19:08
I have added a terrible culinary pun similar to yours – Laurent Duval Feb 12 '17 at 17:31
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@LaurentDuval awesome! Sadly, I can't double-upvote – Marcus Müller Feb 13 '17 at 14:28
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I had two cakes with a different chocolate flavor, and obtained a dual-tree chocolet transform. Unfortunately, parts of my belly became redundant – Laurent Duval Feb 13 '17 at 15:36

Marcus Müller · Answer 5 · 2017-01-22T20:31:38.670

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I personally also consider this very early XKCD to be a signal processing joke:

[

EDIT: While were doing early xkcd:

(both, of course, by Randall Munroe, CC-SA-Noncommercial)

edited Jan 22 '17 at 20:31

answered Jan 22 '17 at 19:04

Marcus Müller

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The "Meouw" part is TOO "time-based" to get credit for:) – Laurent Duval Jan 22 '17 at 19:20
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Upvote the cat joke! The meouw-law compels you! (especially since the dynamic range for giving or not giving credit is pretty limited) – Marcus Müller Jan 22 '17 at 19:26
Upvoted is already done. Credits are in a different dimension – Laurent Duval Jan 22 '17 at 19:31
You must be kidding. Poisson (Fisch) and Cat totally cancel each other like scissors/paper/stone, albethy trilingual. – Laurent Duval Jan 22 '17 at 19:33
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Ohhh! There's a whole class of jokes to be made about distributing fish! – Marcus Müller Jan 22 '17 at 19:41
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And in the category of bilingual jokes, there's a lot of (rather lewd) potential in leakage translating to the same German word as licking. – Marcus Müller Jan 22 '17 at 19:42

score 6 · Answer 6 · answered May 23 '21 at 14:23

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Sent to me by my friend Jerry Doty:

answered May 23 '21 at 14:23

Dan Boschen

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score 5 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 30 '22 at 13:57

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I met up with RBJ at a bar this weekend and he immediately wanted to get into deeper details of the Fourier Transform. I refused--- it's just too dangerous to drink an derive.

answered Jan 30 '22 at 13:57

Dan Boschen

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Especially when you are sliding – Laurent Duval Jan 30 '22 at 14:27
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I worry about rectal leakage using a rectangular window. – robert bristow-johnson Feb 04 '22 at 16:27

score 4 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 22 '17 at 19:40

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Ever wondered why there's "Live Aloha" bumper stickers? Aloha is a remarkably unhealthy approach to vehicular traffic.

answered Jan 22 '17 at 19:40

Marcus Müller

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score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 22 '17 at 15:52

  ___       __                           _      _   _   _   __
   |  |  | |       _|__|_ |\  /| |    | / \ |  / ` | \ / \ |  \
   |  |--| |-      _|__|_ | \/ | |    | `-. | |    |  |`-. |__/
   |  |  | |__      |  |  |    |  \__/  \_/ |  \_, |_/ \_/ |
             _          __       ___         __   __  _
       ,´\  | \ \    / |   |\  |  |  |    | |  \ |   / \
       |__| |  | \  /  |-  | \ |  |  |    | |__/ |-  `-.
       |  | |_/   \/   |__ |  \|  |   \__/  |  \ |__ \_/
               _________________________________
               EPISODE XI - FIXED POINT L33TNESS
               Guest script & sketch artist: mrl
                      INTRODUCING: ZEPHOD
               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|(_)   o  ..Hi bram!                o ..Hi Phixedpoint zePh0d!
|     <&>                          <#>
|     /·\                          /P\ 

|(_)   o  ..Oh goodie!              o ..Cum here and i'll tell
|     <&\                          \#\  j00 all about my *HOT*
|     /·\                          /P\  adventures with mrl..

|(_)               crap.. o       __o ..Ha ha! You and your
|                        /&>        #> "fixed-point l33tness"!
|      ·                 / \       /P\          *END OF EP.11*

It misspells 1337N355! ;-) My VW Beetle has the license place F34TUR3. :-) — Peter K., Jan 22 '17 at 16:42

score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Dec 30 '23 at 21:07

3

I wrote a paper with Brian Lovell and Boualem Boashash about the Wigner-Ville time-frequency representation. I'm not a fan of the Wigner-Ville for signal processing as I believe there are many better approaches to problems that it might solve.

To make this displeasure known but not obviously, I chose to encode it in the notation used in the paper.

answered Dec 30 '23 at 21:07

Peter K.

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Well, this definitely had $\frac{\mathrm d, F_u(n)}{\mathrm d,n} >0 $ for me – Marcus Müller Dec 30 '23 at 21:44

score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 17 '19 at 16:40

2

At the GNU Radio Conference:

I'll skirt over scalloping losses here

answered Sep 17 '19 at 16:40

Marcus Müller

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score 2 · Answer 12 · answered Jul 26 '20 at 14:50

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I was going to tell a joke about the appendages of an absolutely normal cat, but it has a really fat tail.

^Source

answered Jul 26 '20 at 14:50

Marcus Müller

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I was going to retweet your joke, but I now prefer to signal it – Laurent Duval Jul 26 '20 at 15:12

score 2 · Answer 13 · answered Mar 21 '21 at 21:26

2

Superheterodyne Receivers:

Compared to direct conversion, not that complex.

answered Mar 21 '21 at 21:26

Marcus Müller

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score 2 · Answer 14 · answered Mar 24 '22 at 21:09

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I made this terrible visible pun for a shirt for myself, but then made it available for the benefit of a favorite software project of mine as merchandise

answered Mar 24 '22 at 21:09

Marcus Müller

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Since "stern" means star, isn't consternation? – Laurent Duval Mar 24 '22 at 21:17
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bad synchronization is always cause for conSTERNation :) – Marcus Müller Mar 25 '22 at 09:33
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(on a serious note: Constellation (as in "star pattern") is "Sternbild" (star image), but I'm having an incredibly hard time coming up with a pun that involves Phasenumtastung (tasten = to key -> Tastung = (noun) keying -> +um prefix -> "re-keying"; Phasen = phases), but that's the hardship of compounding languages: even while reading, the receiver does a lot that kind of seems to approximate a BCJR on the compound's meaning, so that puns on compound words quickly become awkward) – Marcus Müller Mar 25 '22 at 09:53

score 1 · Answer 15 · answered Mar 24 '22 at 21:01

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I'm not ashamed I've decorated an institute hallway with this.

answered Mar 24 '22 at 21:01

Marcus Müller

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DSP or signal/image/data processing jokes

15 Answers15