I once heard the book by Meyer (1993) described as a "vulgarization" of wavelets. While this is true in one sense of the word, that of making a sub­ ject popular (Meyer's book is one of the early works written with the non­ specialist in mind), the implication seems to be that such an attempt some­ how cheapens or coarsens the subject. I have to disagree that popularity goes hand-in-hand with debasement. is certainly a beautiful theory underlying wavelet analysis, there is While there plenty of beauty left over for the applications of wavelet methods. This book is also written for the non-specialist, and therefore its main thrust is toward wavelet applications. Enough theory is given to help the reader gain a basic understanding of how wavelets work in practice, but much of the theory can be presented using only a basic level of mathematics. Only one theorem is for­ mally stated in this book, with only one proof. And these are only included to introduce some key concepts in a natural way.