This is a clickbait title. It doesn't offer any evidence that Homer Simpson's face originated with the Fourier Transform, merely that you can recreate it with "circles." Seems the title ought to be changed.
The original title was "The Math Trick Behind MP3s, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson’s Face". I believe that it better represents the actual content than your version ("The Fourier transform, a widely applicable mathematical discovery").
There is nothing "clickbait-y" about the author/editor's chosen title, unless this derisive label has become to mean any title that is not entirely devoid of humour, metaphors, or imagination. Trying, and succeeding, to generate interest isn't evil. Otherwise, please rename "hacker news" to "social content discovery platform for mostly white American males aged 18 to 40 employed in IT"(.ycombinator.com).
The original title is better suited to communicate the style and substance of the article. Reading it, it is immediately obvious that is an attempt at a pop-science treatment of Fourier trans. That is exactly what you get, the minor nitpick about the Simpsons being dragged into it somewhat arbitrarily nonwithstanding.
I'd add that the title of an article is as much part of the creation as the article itself. Of course, everyone has every legal right to use whatever words they want when linking to it. But, considering that titles are artistic expressions, I believe it would be appropriate to consider–at least in marginal cases–to respect the original work and its creator. To that effect, it may be worthwhile exploring ways to indicate when a title is not the original, or to maybe always keep original titles, but, where necessary, add add a subtitle with the 10-word summary people seem to be craving.
HN's policy on titles has been in place for many years (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and is specifically organized around what you call 'respect for the original work and its creator'. If there's any place on the internet more organized around such respect, I'd like to know. In my mind we're a tiny outpost that actually cares about this and that's a big reason why readers come here.
At the same time (as you'll also see if you read the site guidelines), we ask users to change titles that are misleading or linkbait. This is obviously necessary for any site that aspires to intellectual substance, though of course people often disagree about particular cases and that's fine.
Article authors typically don't write headlines so I don't see this as a creativity issue. Web publications are notorious for making baity headlines—that's the headline's job from their point of view. "The Math Trick Behind MP3s, JPEGs, and Homer Simpson’s Face" is an obvious case of this, which is why so many HN readers protested. But a moderator found a better title than the one I changed it to.
When we change a title to something less misleading or baity, we try to use a representative phrase from the article itself, so in many cases the HN title ends up being more in line with the author's intention, not less.
I must push back against your dig at the HN community. It's both weirdly out of place—what do race, age, gender and nation have to do with article titles?—and insulting to the great many members who don't fit your description, who are every bit as welcome here as those who do.
My "alternative name" for HN was in no way meant as a criticism of the community. I was just trying to demonstrate that the name "Hacker news" itself is designed to be more attractive than an anodyne description would be: "Hacker" being a term that conjures a certain image. I tried to contrast it with the most boring just-the-facts description I could think of, and no criticism of either the community nor you and the other moderator(s?) was implied in that characterisation.
