scipy.stats.circmean#

scipy.stats.circmean(samples, high=6.283185307179586, low=0, axis=None, nan_policy='propagate', *, keepdims=False)[source]#

Compute the circular mean for samples in a range.

Parameters:
samplesarray_like

Input array.

highfloat or int, optional

High boundary for the sample range. Default is 2*pi.

lowfloat or int, optional

Low boundary for the sample range. Default is 0.

axisint or None, default: None

If an int, the axis of the input along which to compute the statistic. The statistic of each axis-slice (e.g. row) of the input will appear in a corresponding element of the output. If None, the input will be raveled before computing the statistic.

nan_policy{‘propagate’, ‘omit’, ‘raise’}

Defines how to handle input NaNs.

  • propagate: if a NaN is present in the axis slice (e.g. row) along which the statistic is computed, the corresponding entry of the output will be NaN.

  • omit: NaNs will be omitted when performing the calculation. If insufficient data remains in the axis slice along which the statistic is computed, the corresponding entry of the output will be NaN.

  • raise: if a NaN is present, a ValueError will be raised.

keepdimsbool, default: False

If this is set to True, the axes which are reduced are left in the result as dimensions with size one. With this option, the result will broadcast correctly against the input array.

Returns:
circmeanfloat

Circular mean.

See also

circstd

Circular standard deviation.

circvar

Circular variance.

Notes

Beginning in SciPy 1.9, np.matrix inputs (not recommended for new code) are converted to np.ndarray before the calculation is performed. In this case, the output will be a scalar or np.ndarray of appropriate shape rather than a 2D np.matrix. Similarly, while masked elements of masked arrays are ignored, the output will be a scalar or np.ndarray rather than a masked array with mask=False.

Examples

For simplicity, all angles are printed out in degrees.

>>> import numpy as np
>>> from scipy.stats import circmean
>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
>>> angles = np.deg2rad(np.array([20, 30, 330]))
>>> circmean = circmean(angles)
>>> np.rad2deg(circmean)
7.294976657784009
>>> mean = angles.mean()
>>> np.rad2deg(mean)
126.66666666666666

Plot and compare the circular mean against the arithmetic mean.

>>> plt.plot(np.cos(np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 500)),
...          np.sin(np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, 500)),
...          c='k')
>>> plt.scatter(np.cos(angles), np.sin(angles), c='k')
>>> plt.scatter(np.cos(circmean), np.sin(circmean), c='b',
...             label='circmean')
>>> plt.scatter(np.cos(mean), np.sin(mean), c='r', label='mean')
>>> plt.legend()
>>> plt.axis('equal')
>>> plt.show()
../../_images/scipy-stats-circmean-1.png