Tom Loredo wrote in message ...
Hi Ryan-

The sines and cosines that get used to build up a waveform in
Fourier analysis are the "basis functions" of the Fourier
transform. It is possible to decompose signals using many
different types of bases. The Fourier basis (sines and cosines,
harmonically related if the signal is of finite extent) has
some nice mathematical properties that make the decomposition
(and recomposition) simpler, mathematically, than it is with
many other bases. But that simplicity doesn't make the
Fourier basis "right" for all applications...

Thank you for this copious amount of unsolicited information. It is
already proving useful.