Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Drawing on interviews with leading wavelet researchers in the USA and France, this book tells the story of the rise of the field. It attempts to make the subject accessible to the non-mathematical reader, without sacrificing precision. The material is organized so that the mathematical details can be assimilated at the reader's own pace. The main text is devoid of formulas and relates a story of people and ideas, while separate boxes and appendices contain intricate discussions for the more mathematically minded.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Hubbard presents a "multi-scale" exploration of a topic of great current interest: wavelets. Her goal is "to make [this material] simultaneously surprising and believable," and on the whole, she succeeds. By dividing the text into two parts, the first, a general-audience discussion, the second, a more exact presentation including formulae, she manages to introduce wavelets to almost any reader wanting to learn some basics. In each part, she writes on several levels. The first part contains a historical development, starting from the discovery of Fourier series in the early 19th century, and a discussion of the applications of wavelets in various disciplines, all of which can be understood by readers with no particular mathematical background. But in addition, this part contains numerous asides (labeled "Beyond Plain English") that connect with the more technical material in the second portion. And the more technical second part (also "Beyond Plain English") begins with the most basic definitions, while introducing the reader to still more advanced topics such as Gibb's phenomena, distributions, and function spaces. The writer, not a mathematician, based her work on interviews with leading figures in wavelet research. For all levels. J. D. Fehribach Worcester Polytechnic Institute