ABCD effect (shanker's blog)

this is from my homeboy shanker's blog , it is not copyrighted or anything so i thought i would paste it here . For similar stuff got to his blog

Now this one's more interesting. Discovered in the DSP class( for the uninitiated thats Digital Signal Processing), this actually is applicable to most of the subjects since class 1. Lets take an example i like to quote for explaining it. The name came up from the very same analogy. The ABCD effects shows itself i 2 ways.

CASE 1: Consider a Class 2 student who missed the whole of Class 1 implying he has no idea what ABCD...Z is and doesnt even know how to write it. For such a guy/gal(though effect is seen more in the former) , when a teacher writes "CAT" its the same effect as looking at a person drawing a hill. For all he knows there's a curve and a few lines on the board. All he can do is take it down, as it is ,and call it "C-A-T" as he's told.. This is case 1 of how we understand DSP.For all i and many others know X[k] looks good and surprisingly is totally different from x[k] or X(k).So we just take it down and accept it as given and call it as series or transforms....

CASE 2: Now consider another Class 2 student who did attend Class 1 but didnt understand a thing of what was happening. Meaning if he sees "CAT", he knows there's a "C"(see) , an "A"(ay) and a "T" (tee). But frustratingly for him, the teacher keeps calling it "CAT" when all he can see is "SeeAyTee". And when asked to spell out "BAT" he can find no letter from A -Z which can make it sound like that. Now considering DSP, even if we get X[k],X(k) or x[k], we have no idea what the heck its useful for. Agreed it might mean Fourier Series or Transform but so??? What could we possibly do with it.

CASE 3 : Then there are the perfect students who know their ABCD's , know how it varies and exactly how and where its used. Yup there are examples of such people in DSP(or any class for that matter) too...

Since if you miss anything in Class1 you dont understand most of Class 2, and so on to Class 3...etc. It can be seen from Mathematical Induction, which i picked up from one of those Classes on the way here, that whatever you miss in Class N, is directly the effect of your non-attentiveness in Class M (M<=N).

Anyway cutting the crap ABCD effect can help to classify all the students in a class...If you manage to classify any other group do let me know, so as to expand the ABCD effect.