[time-nuts] Misuse of word "decimate" (was Re: Short term 10MHz source)

[Magnus Danielson]

Hi,

On 2019-01-10 22:31, Tom Van Baak wrote:
>> I don't think case A makes sense.  You are throwing away information.  You
>> will get aliasing.
> Hal,
>
> Ah, but we do this all the time. Your GPSDO or your cesium standard outputs 10 MHz. There are many cases where throwing 9,999,999 of every 10,000,000 is useful. The result is ... 1PPS.
>
> Yes, this is throwing away information. But most of it is useless information. For example, if your Cs is ahead of GPS by 123 ns, you don't need 10 million measurements to tell you that. One will do. So 1PPS is useful here.

Sure, but decimation methods may be applicable to estimate a good value 
for it. It is not always needed, for sure, but this is one of the cases 
you want to do one of them and others the others.

Cheers,
Magnus