Signal Processing - March 2017 - 4

special issue. There, they saw a miniature
camera that is smaller than a fingernail,
a light-field camera that captures different focus and depth of a scene, a dissection of a virtual reality (VR) headset, and
an analysis of the invisible signatures in
paintings, just to name a few. The class
was excited about these: "Oh, yes, I tried
new goggles, and it's so cool!" said a boy
about a VR headset he tested during the
holiday season. "I have to have that camera," said a girl to me afterward.
I then turned to the first page of the
magazine and told them that I had an
essay assignment for each magazine
issue, just like the writing tasks they regularly have, and that my editorials drew
inspirations from interacting with other
people, including them-my son's elementary school class. To calm the puzzled
expressions on many of the students'
faces, I read to them the first part of my
editorial in the March 2015 issue of the
magazine [2]. That particular editorial
started by me sharing holiday traditions
and cultural heritages that were done so

well in my son's elementary school. Then
the editorial discussed the sharing of our
technical field with the general public.
There I was inspired by the computing
community's one-hour coding effort, including the enthusiastic reaction from the
outreach at my son's school.
At the end of this reading session, I
thanked the class for letting me share my
technical area with them. To be honest,
it was not an easy job in the traditional
format of reading and conversation, without using a projector, slides, or board as
in a professional presentation and teaching that many of us have gotten so used
to. Yet, these young students participated
with full curiosity and enthusiasm. A girl
approached me right after and said, "You
definitely should talk to our technology
teacher," (who teaches them the basics
about computing, including one-hour
coding as early as kindergarten). She
paused and added, "How about writing
a children's book, a picture book about
your signals, maybe about how it got the
processing by that cool camera?" Well,

while we might have thought that young
minds would prefer video to print material, we as a community have just received
a challenge from an eight-year-old: a
signal processing book for children!
Many of us have seen, with awe and,
maybe, also a hint of jealousy, the high
profile of the computer coding initiatives.
If Dr. Seuss could win a bet with his publisher over the seemingly impossible task
of using just 50 simple words to write a
fun story, perhaps there is some truth to
this surprise "assignment" that is worth
our pondering!

References

[1] A. Agrawal, R. Baraniuk, P. Favaro, and A.
Veeraraghavan, "Signal processing for computational photography and displays [From the Guest Editors]," IEEE
Signal Process. Mag. vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 12-15, Sept. 2016.
[2] M. Wu, "Sharing signal processing with the world
[From the Editor]," IEEE Signal Process. Mag. vol. 32,
no. 2, p. 4, Mar. 2015.

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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MSP.2017.2673078

IEEE SIgnal ProcESSIng MagazInE

March 2017

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signal Processing - March 2017