Number & Driftwood
Driftwood
Hey, have you ever noticed how the waves seem to have their own secret rhythm, like a melody written in salt and wind? I've been wondering if there's a pattern there, something that would make a data analyst's heart skip a beat. What do you think?
Number
Yes, I’ve been cataloguing waveforms for years. If you sample the sea at regular intervals you can fit a sinusoid, or even a Fourier series, to the data. The peaks line up with predictable frequencies—think of them as the ocean’s own harmonic series. It’s a beautiful reminder that even salt and wind follow math.
Driftwood
That’s like listening to the sea’s own lullaby, and I keep forgetting what day it is while I’m still humming its tune. What’s the biggest wave you’ve ever felt?
Number
The largest wave I've ever catalogued was a tsunami off the coast of Alaska in 1958 that reached 30 meters at the shore, and the largest rogue wave ever recorded by a buoy was 33.5 meters in 2009 in the North Atlantic. Those numbers are the upper bounds of what we see in the data.
Driftwood
Wow, 33.5 metres—those giants are like the ocean’s way of saying it has secrets it still doesn’t want to share, don’t you think? It’s almost like the sea keeps one last wave for the moon itself.
Number
I agree, those extremes are rare outliers that remind us the ocean’s data still has gaps. It’s like a signal waiting to be fully decoded.