Everywhere I read about the FFT, I read about frequency bins. I can't find anything about what is precisely meant with 'bin'. What I wonder about is if this is actually meant to imply that the FFT returns binned data in the sense of the word as used in statistics.
I think this question can be rephrased into this example: if I have bins centered at 1Hz, 2Hz, 3Hz, etcetera, what would happen to a frequency component at 2.4Hz? If the frequency bins are actually bins, I think this would mean that the amplitude is simply added to the 2Hz bin.
If the bins are indeed bins as I interpret the word, I would really like to know why the FFT results are binned. If not, then I am curious why they are called bins.