I do have a function, for example , but this can be something else as well, like a quadratic or logarithmic function. I am only interested in the domain of . The parameters of the function (a and k in this case) are known as well.
My goal is to fit a continuous piece-wise function to this, which contains alternating segments of linear functions (i.e. sloped straight segments, each with intercept of 0) and constants (i.e. horizontal segments joining the sloped segments together). The first and last segments are both sloped. And the number of segments should be pre-selected between around 9-29 (that is 5-15 linear steps + 4-14 constant plateaus).
Formally
The input function:
The fitted piecewise function:
I am looking for the optimal resulting parameters (c,r,b) (in terms of least squares) if the segment numbers (n) are specified beforehand.
The resulting constants (c) and the breakpoints (r) should be whole natural numbers, and the slopes (b) round two decimal point values.
I have tried to do the fitting numerically using the pwlf package using a segmented constant models, and further processed the resulting constant model with some graphical intuition to "slice" the constant steps with the slopes. It works to some extent, but I am sure this is suboptimal from both fitting perspective and computational efficiency. It takes multiple minutes to generate a fitting with 8 slopes on the range of 1-50000. I am sure there must be a better way to do this.
My idea would be to instead using only numerical methods/ML, the fact that we have the algebraic form of the input function could be exploited in some way to at least to use algebraic transforms (integrals) to get to a simpler optimization problem.
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import pwlf
# The input function
def input_func(x,k,a):
return np.power(x,1/a)*k
x = np.arange(1,5e4)
y = input_func(x, 1.8, 1.3)
plt.plot(x,y);
def pw_fit(func, x_r, no_seg, *fparams):
# working on the specified range
x = np.arange(1,x_r)
y_input = func(x, *fparams)
my_pwlf = pwlf.PiecewiseLinFit(x, y_input, degree=0)
res = my_pwlf.fit(no_seg)
yHat = my_pwlf.predict(x)
# Function values at the breakpoints
y_isec = func(res, *fparams)
# Slope values at the breakpoints
slopes = np.round(y_isec / res, decimals=2)
slopes = slopes[1:]
# For the first slope value, I use the intersection of the first constant plateau and the input function
slopes = np.insert(slopes,0,np.round(y_input[np.argwhere(np.diff(np.sign(y_input - yHat))).flatten()[0]] / np.argwhere(np.diff(np.sign(y_input - yHat))).flatten()[0], decimals=2))
plateaus = np.unique(np.round(yHat))
# If due to rounding slope values (to two decimals), there is no change in a subsequent step, I just remove those segments
to_del = np.argwhere(np.diff(slopes) == 0).flatten()
slopes = np.delete(slopes,to_del + 1)
plateaus = np.delete(plateaus,to_del)
breakpoints = [np.ceil(plateaus[0]/slopes[0])]
for idx, j in enumerate(slopes[1:-1]):
breakpoints.append(np.floor(plateaus[idx]/j))
breakpoints.append(np.ceil(plateaus[idx+1]/j))
breakpoints.append(np.floor(plateaus[-1]/slopes[-1]))
return slopes, plateaus, breakpoints
slo, plat, breaks = pw_fit(input_func, 50000, 8, 1.8, 1.3)
# The piecewise function itself
def pw_calc(x, slopes, plateaus, breaks):
x = x.astype('float')
cond_list = [x < breaks[0]]
for idx, j in enumerate(breaks[:-1]):
cond_list.append((j <= x) & (x < breaks[idx+1]))
cond_list.append(breaks[-1] <= x)
func_list = [lambda x: x * slopes[0]]
for idx, j in enumerate(slopes[1:]):
func_list.append(plateaus[idx])
func_list.append(lambda x, j=j: x * j)
return np.piecewise(x, cond_list, func_list)
y_output = pw_calc(x, slo, plat, breaks)
plt.plot(x,y,y_output);
(Not important, but I think the fitted piecewise function is not continuous as it is. Intervals should be x<=r1; r1<x<=r2; ....)
As Anatolyg has pointed out, it looks to me that in the optimal solution (for the function posted at least, and probably for any where the derivative is different from zero), the horizantal segments will collapse to a point or the minimum segment length (in this case 1).
EDIT---------------------------------------------
The behavior above could only be valid if the slopes could have an intercept. If the intercepts are zero, as posted in the question, one consideration must be taken into account: Is the initial parabolic function defined in zero or nearby? Imagine the function y=0.001 *sqrt(x-1000), then the segments defined as b*x will have a slope close to zero and will be so similar to the constant segments that the best fit will be just the line that without intercept that fits better all the function.
Provided that the function is defined in zero or nearby, you can start by approximating the curve just by linear segments (with intercepts):
divide the function domain in N intervals(equal intervals or whose size is a function of the average curvature (or second derivative) of the function along the domain).
linear fit/regression in each intervals
for each interval, if a point (or bunch of points) in the extreme of any interval is better fitted by the line of the neighbor interval than the line of its interval, this point is assigned to the neighbor interval.
Repeat from 2) until no extreme points are moved.
Linear regressions might be optimized not to calculate all the covariance matrixes from scratch on each iteration, but just adding the contributions of the moved points to the previous covariance matrixes.
Then each linear segment (LSi) is replaced by a combination of a small constant segment at the beginning (Cbi), a linear segment without intercept (Si), and another constant segment at the end (Cei). This segments are easy to calculate as Si will contain the middle point of LSi, and Cbi and Cei will have respectively the begin and end values of the segment LSi. Then the intervals of each segment has to be calculated as an intersection between lines.
With this, the constant end segment will be collinear with the constant begin segment from the next interval so they will merge, resulting in a series of constant and linear segments interleaved.
But this would be a floating point start solution. Next, you will have to apply all the roundings which will mess up quite a lot all the segments as the conditions integer intervals and linear segments without slope can be very confronting. In fact, b,c,r are not totally independent. If ci and ri+1 are known, then bi+1 is already fixed
If nothing is broken so far, the final task will be to minimize the error/cost function (I assume that it will be the integral of the error between the parabolic function and the segments). My guess is that gradients here will be quite a pain, as if you change for example one ci, all the rest of the bj and cj will have to adapt as well due to the integer intervals restriction. However, if you can generalize the derivatives between parameters ( how much do I have to adapt bi+1 if ci changes a unit), you can propagate the change of one parameter to all other parameters and have kind of a gradient. Then for each interval, you can estimate what would be the ideal parameter and averaging all intervals calculate the best gradient step. Let me illustrate this:
Assuming first that r parameters are fixed, if I change c1 by one unit, b2 changes by 0.1, c2 changes by -0.2 and b3 changes by 0.2. This would be the gradient.
Then I estimate, comparing with the parabolic curve, that c1 should increase 0.5 (to reduce the cost by 10 points), b2 should increase 0.2 (to reduce the cost by 5 points), c2 should increase 0.2 (to reduce the cost by 6 points) and b3 should increase 0.1 (to reduce the cost by 9 points).
Finally, the gradient step would be (0.5/1·10 + 0.2/0.1·5 - 0.2/(-0.2)·6 + 0.1/0.2·9)/(10 + 5 + 6 + 9)~= 0.45. Thus, c1 would increase 0.45 units, b2 would increase 0.45·0.1, and so on.
When you add the r parameters to the pot, as integer intervals do not have an proper derivative, calculation is not straightforward. However, you can consider r parameters as floating points, calculate and apply the gradient step and then apply the roundings.
We can integrate the squared error function for linear and constant pieces and let SciPy optimize it. Python 3:
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import scipy.optimize
xl = 1
xh = 50000
a = 1.3
p = 1 / a
n = 8
def split_b_and_c(bc):
return bc[::2], bc[1::2]
def solve_for_r(b, c):
r = np.empty(2 * n)
r[0] = xl
r[1:-1:2] = c / b[:-1]
r[2::2] = c / b[1:]
r[-1] = xh
return r
def linear_residual_integral(b, x):
return (
(x ** (2 * p + 1)) / (2 * p + 1)
- 2 * b * x ** (p + 2) / (p + 2)
+ b ** 2 * x ** 3 / 3
)
def constant_residual_integral(c, x):
return x ** (2 * p + 1) / (2 * p + 1) - 2 * c * x ** (p + 1) / (p + 1) + c ** 2 * x
def squared_error(bc):
b, c = split_b_and_c(bc)
r = solve_for_r(b, c)
linear = np.sum(
linear_residual_integral(b, r[1::2]) - linear_residual_integral(b, r[::2])
)
constant = np.sum(
constant_residual_integral(c, r[2::2])
- constant_residual_integral(c, r[1:-1:2])
)
return linear + constant
def evaluate(x, b, c, r):
i = 0
while x > r[i + 1]:
i += 1
return b[i // 2] * x if i % 2 == 0 else c[i // 2]
def main():
bc0 = (xl + (xh - xl) * np.arange(1, 4 * n - 2, 2) / (4 * n - 2)) ** (
p - 1 + np.arange(2 * n - 1) % 2
)
bc = scipy.optimize.minimize(
squared_error, bc0, bounds=[(1e-06, None) for i in range(2 * n - 1)]
).x
b, c = split_b_and_c(bc)
r = solve_for_r(b, c)
X = np.linspace(xl, xh, 1000)
Y = [evaluate(x, b, c, r) for x in X]
plt.plot(X, X ** p)
plt.plot(X, Y)
plt.show()
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
I have tried to come up with a new solution myself, based on the idea of #Amo Robb, where I have partitioned the domain, and curve fitted a dual - constant and linear - piece together (with the help of np.maximum). I have used the 1 / f(x)' as the function to designate the breakpoints, but I know this is arbitrary and does not provide a global optimum. Maybe there is some optimal function for these breakpoints. But this solution is OK for me, as it might be appropriate to have a better fit at the first segments, at the expense of the error for the later segments. (The task itself is actually a cost based retail margin calculation {supply price -> added margin}, as the retail POS software can only work with such piecewise margin function).
The answer from #David Eisenstat is correct optimal solution if the parameters are allowed to be floats. Unfortunately the POS software can not use floats. It is OK to round up c-s and r-s afterwards. But the b-s should be rounded to two decimals, as those are inputted as percents, and this constraint would ruin the optimal solution with long floats. I will try to further improve my solution with both Amo's and David's valuable input. Thank You for that!
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit
# The input function f(x)
def input_func(x,k,a):
return np.power(x,1/a) * k
# 1 / f(x)'
def one_per_der(x,k,a):
return a / (k * np.power(x, 1/a-1))
# 1 / f(x)' inverted
def one_per_der_inv(x,k,a):
return np.power(a / (x*k), a / (1-a))
def segment_fit(start,end,y,first_val):
b, _ = curve_fit(lambda x,b: np.maximum(first_val, b*x), np.arange(start,end), y[start-1:end-1])
b = float(np.round(b, decimals=2))
bp = np.round(first_val / b)
last_val = np.round(b * end)
return b, bp, last_val
def pw_fit(end_range, no_seg, **fparams):
y_bps = np.linspace(one_per_der(1, **fparams), one_per_der(end_range,**fparams) , no_seg+1)[1:]
x_bps = np.round(one_per_der_inv(y_bps, **fparams))
y = input_func(x, **fparams)
slopes = [np.round(float(curve_fit(lambda x,b: x * b, np.arange(1,x_bps[0]), y[:int(x_bps[0])-1])[0]), decimals = 2)]
plats = [np.round(x_bps[0] * slopes[0])]
bps = []
for i, xbp in enumerate(x_bps[1:]):
b, bp, last_val = segment_fit(int(x_bps[i]+1), int(xbp), y, plats[i])
slopes.append(b); bps.append(bp); plats.append(last_val)
breaks = sorted(list(x_bps) + bps)[:-1]
# If due to rounding slope values (to two decimals), there is no change in a subsequent step, I just remove those segments
to_del = np.argwhere(np.diff(slopes) == 0).flatten()
breaks_to_del = np.concatenate((to_del * 2, to_del * 2 + 1))
slopes = np.delete(slopes,to_del + 1)
plats = np.delete(plats[:-1],to_del)
breaks = np.delete(breaks,breaks_to_del)
return slopes, plats, breaks
def pw_calc(x, slopes, plateaus, breaks):
x = x.astype('float')
cond_list = [x < breaks[0]]
for idx, j in enumerate(breaks[:-1]):
cond_list.append((j <= x) & (x < breaks[idx+1]))
cond_list.append(breaks[-1] <= x)
func_list = [lambda x: x * slopes[0]]
for idx, j in enumerate(slopes[1:]):
func_list.append(plateaus[idx])
func_list.append(lambda x, j=j: x * j)
return np.piecewise(x, cond_list, func_list)
fparams = {'k':1.8, 'a':1.2}
end_range = 5e4
no_steps = 10
x = np.arange(1, end_range)
y = input_func(x, **fparams)
slopes, plats, breaks = pw_fit(end_range, no_steps, **fparams)
y_output = pw_calc(x, slopes, plats, breaks)
plt.plot(x,y_output,y);
I am working on finding the frequencies from a given dataset and I am struggling to understand how np.fft.fft() works. I thought I had a working script but ran into a weird issue that I cannot understand.
I have a dataset that is roughly sinusoidal and I wanted to understand what frequencies the signal is composed of. Once I took the FFT, I got this plot:
However, when I take the same dataset, slice it in half, and plot the same thing, I get this:
I do not understand why the frequency drops from 144kHz to 128kHz which technically should be the same dataset but with a smaller length.
I can confirm a few things:
Step size between data points 0.001
I have tried interpolation with little luck.
If I slice the second half of the dataset I get a different frequency as well.
If my dataset is indeed composed of both 128 and 144kHz, then why doesn't the 128 peak show up in the first plot?
What is even more confusing is that I am running a script with pure sine waves without issues:
T = 0.001
fs = 1 / T
def find_nearest_ind(data, value):
return (np.abs(data - value)).argmin()
x = np.arange(0, 30, T)
ff = 0.2
y = np.sin(2 * ff * np.pi * x)
x = x[:len(x) // 2]
y = y[:len(y) // 2]
n = len(y) # length of the signal
k = np.arange(n)
T = n / fs
frq = k / T * 1e6 / 1000 # two sides frequency range
frq = frq[:len(frq) // 2] # one side frequency range
Y = np.fft.fft(y) / n # dft and normalization
Y = Y[:n // 2]
frq = frq[:50]
Y = Y[:50]
fig, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(2)
ax1.plot(x, y)
ax1.set_xlabel("Time (us)")
ax1.set_ylabel("Electric Field (V / mm)")
peak_ind = find_nearest_ind(abs(Y), np.max(abs(Y)))
ax2.plot(frq, abs(Y))
ax2.axvline(frq[peak_ind], color = 'black', linestyle = '--', label = F"Frequency = {round(frq[peak_ind], 3)}kHz")
plt.legend()
plt.xlabel('Freq(kHz)')
ax1.title.set_text('dV/dX vs. Time')
ax2.title.set_text('Frequencies')
fig.tight_layout()
plt.show()
Here is a breakdown of your code, with some suggestions for improvement, and extra explanations. Working through it carefully will show you what is going on. The results you are getting are completely expected. I will propose a common solution at the end.
First set up your units correctly. I assume that you are dealing with seconds, not microseconds. You can adjust later as long as you stay consistent.
Establish the period and frequency of the sampling. This means that the Nyquist frequency for the FFT will be 500Hz:
T = 0.001 # 1ms sampling period
fs = 1 / T # 1kHz sampling frequency
Make a time domain of 30e3 points. The half domain will contain 15000 points. That implies a frequency resolution of 500Hz / 15k = 0.03333Hz.
x = np.arange(0, 30, T) # time domain
n = x.size # number of points: 30000
Before doing anything else, we can define our time domain right here. I prefer a more intuitive approach than what you are using. That way you don't have to redefine T or introduce the auxiliary variable k. But as long as the results are the same, it does not really matter:
F = np.linspace(0, 1 - 1/n, n) / T # Notice F[1] = 0.03333, as predicted
Now define the signal. You picked ff = 0.2. Notice that 0.2Hz. 0.2 / 0.03333 = 6, so you would expect to see your peak in exactly bin index 6 (F[6] == 0.2). To better illustrate what is going on, let's take ff = 0.22. This will bleed the spectrum into neighboring bins.
ff = 0.22
y = np.sin(2 * np.pi * ff * x)
Now take the FFT:
Y = np.fft.fft(y) / n
maxbin = np.abs(Y).argmax() # 7
maxF = F[maxbin] # 0.23333333: This is the nearest bin
Since your frequency bins are 0.03Hz wide, the best resolution you can expect 0.015Hz. For your real data, which has much lower resolution, the error is much larger.
Now let's take a look at what happens when you halve the data size. Among other things, the frequency resolution becomes smaller. Now you have a maximum frequency of 500Hz spread over 7.5k samples, not 15k: the resolution drops to 0.066666Hz per bin:
n2 = n // 2 # 15000
F2 = np.linspace(0, 1 - 1 / n2, n2) / T # F[1] = 0.06666
Y2 = np.fft.fft(y[:n2]) / n2
Take a look what happens to the frequency estimate:
maxbin2 = np.abs(Y2).argmax() # 3
maxF2 = F2[maxbin2] # 0.2: This is the nearest bin
Hopefully, you can see how this applies to your original data. In the full FFT, you have a resolution of ~16.1 per bin with the full data, and ~32.2kHz with the half data. So your original result is within ~±8kHz of the right peak, while the second one is within ~±16kHz. The true frequency is therefore between 136kHz and 144kHz. Another way to look at it is to compare the bins that you showed me:
full: 128.7 144.8 160.9
half: 96.6 128.7 160.9
When you take out exactly half of the data, you drop every other frequency bin. If your peak was originally closest to 144.8kHz, and you drop that bin, it will end up in either 128.7 or 160.9.
Note: Based on the bin numbers you show, I suspect that your computation of frq is a little off. Notice the 1 - 1/n in my linspace expression. You need that to get the right frequency axis: the last bin is (1 - 1/n) / T, not 1 / T, no matter how you compute it.
So how to get around this problem? The simplest solution is to do a parabolic fit on the three points around your peak. That is usually a sufficiently good estimator of the true frequency in the data when you are looking for essentially perfect sinusoids.
def peakF(F, Y):
index = np.abs(Y).argmax()
# Compute offset on normalized domain [-1, 0, 1], not F[index-1:index+2]
y = np.abs(Y[index - 1:index + 2])
# This is the offset from zero, which is the scaled offset from F[index]
vertex = (y[0] - y[2]) / (0.5 * (y[0] + y[2]) - y[1])
# F[1] is the bin resolution
return F[index] + vertex * F[1]
In case you are wondering how I got the formula for the parabola: I solved the system with x = [-1, 0, 1] and y = Y[index - 1:index + 2]. The matrix equation is
[(-1)^2 -1 1] [a] Y[index - 1]
[ 0^2 0 1] # [b] = Y[index]
[ 1^2 1 1] [c] Y[index + 1]
Computing the offset using a normalized domain and scaling afterwards is almost always more numerically stable than using whatever huge numbers you have in F[index - 1:index + 2].
You can plug the results in the example into this function to see if it works:
>>> peakF(F, Y)
0.2261613409657391
>>> peakF(F2, Y2)
0.20401580936430794
As you can see, the parabolic fit gives an improvement, however slight. There is no replacement for just increasing frequency resolution through more samples though!
I wanted to calculate the normalized cross-correlation function of two signals where "x" axes is the time delay and "y" axes is value of correlation between -1 and 1. so I decided to use scipy.
I use the command corr = signal.correlate(s1['Strain'], s2['Strain'], mode='full')
where s1['Strain'] and s2['Strain'] are the pandas dataframe values but it doesn't return the normalized function with "x" axes as time delay.
Here is example data
s1:
Strain
0 -1.587702e-22
1 -1.425868e-22
2 -1.174897e-22
3 -8.559119e-23
4 -4.949480e-23
. .
. .
. .
for s2 it looks similar. I knew the sampling of both datasets, it's 4096 kHz.
Thank for your help.
First of all to get normalized coefficient (such that as lag 0, we get the Pearson correlation):
divide both signals by their standard deviation
scale by the length of the signal over which the convolution is done (shortest signal)
out = correlate(x/np.std(x), y/np.std(y), 'full') / min(len(x), len(y))
Now for the lags, from the official documentation of correlate one can read that the full output of cross-correlation is given by:
z[k] = (x * y)(k - N + 1)
= \sum_{l=0}^{||x||-1}x_l y_{l-k+N-1}^{*}\]
Where * denotes the convolution, and k goes from 0 up to ||x|| + ||y|| - 2 precisely. N is max(len(x), len(y)).
The lags are denoted above as the argument of the convolution (x * y), so they range from 0 - N + 1 to ||x|| + ||y|| - 2 - N + 1 which is n - 1 with n=min(len(x), len(y)).
Also, by briefly looking at the source code, I think they swap x and y sometimes if convenient... (hence the min(len(x), len(y)) in the normalisation above. However this implies to change the start of our lags, therefore:
N = max(len(x), len(y))
n = min(len(x), len(y))
# if len(x) < (len(y):
lags = np.arange(-N + 1, n)
# else:
lags = np.arange(-n + 1, N)
Summary
Check this code on two time-series for which you want to plot the cross-correlation of:
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from scipy.signal import correlate
def plot_xcorr(x, y):
"Plot cross-correlation (full) between two signals."
N = max(len(x), len(y))
n = min(len(x), len(y))
if N == len(y):
lags = np.arange(-N + 1, n)
else:
lags = np.arange(-n + 1, N)
c = correlate(x / np.std(x), y / np.std(y), 'full')
plt.plot(lags, c / n)
plt.show()
To calculate the time delay between two signals, we need to find the cross-correlation between two signals and find the argmax.
Assuming data_1 and data_2 are samples of two signals:
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
correlation = np.correlate(data_1, data_2, mode='same')
delay = np.argmax(correlation) - int(len(correlation)/2)
I have a array of CSV values representing a digital output. It has been gathered using an analog oscilloscope so it is not a perfect digital signal. I'm trying to filter out the data to have a perfect digital signal for calculating the periods (which may vary).
I would also like to define the maximum error i get from this filtration.
Something like this:
Idea
Apply a treshold od the data. Here is a pseudocode:
for data_point_raw in data_array:
if data_point_raw < 0.8: data_point_perfect = LOW
if data_point_raw > 2 : data_point_perfect = HIGH
else:
#area between thresholds
if previous_data_point_perfect == Low : data_point_perfect = LOW
if previous_data_point_perfect == HIGH: data_point_perfect = HIGH
There are two problems bothering me.
This seems like a common problem in digital signal processing, however i haven't found a predefined standard function for it. Is this an ok way to perform the filtering?
How would I get the maximum error?
Here's a bit of code that might help.
from __future__ import division
import numpy as np
def find_transition_times(t, y, threshold):
"""
Given the input signal `y` with samples at times `t`,
find the times where `y` increases through the value `threshold`.
`t` and `y` must be 1-D numpy arrays.
Linear interpolation is used to estimate the time `t` between
samples at which the transitions occur.
"""
# Find where y crosses the threshold (increasing).
lower = y < threshold
higher = y >= threshold
transition_indices = np.where(lower[:-1] & higher[1:])[0]
# Linearly interpolate the time values where the transition occurs.
t0 = t[transition_indices]
t1 = t[transition_indices + 1]
y0 = y[transition_indices]
y1 = y[transition_indices + 1]
slope = (y1 - y0) / (t1 - t0)
transition_times = t0 + (threshold - y0) / slope
return transition_times
def periods(t, y, threshold):
"""
Given the input signal `y` with samples at times `t`,
find the time periods between the times at which the
signal `y` increases through the value `threshold`.
`t` and `y` must be 1-D numpy arrays.
"""
transition_times = find_transition_times(t, y, threshold)
deltas = np.diff(transition_times)
return deltas
if __name__ == "__main__":
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
# Time samples
t = np.linspace(0, 50, 501)
# Use a noisy time to generate a noisy y.
tn = t + 0.05 * np.random.rand(t.size)
y = 0.6 * ( 1 + np.sin(tn) + (1./3) * np.sin(3*tn) + (1./5) * np.sin(5*tn) +
(1./7) * np.sin(7*tn) + (1./9) * np.sin(9*tn))
threshold = 0.5
deltas = periods(t, y, threshold)
print("Measured periods at threshold %g:" % threshold)
print(deltas)
print("Min: %.5g" % deltas.min())
print("Max: %.5g" % deltas.max())
print("Mean: %.5g" % deltas.mean())
print("Std dev: %.5g" % deltas.std())
trans_times = find_transition_times(t, y, threshold)
plt.plot(t, y)
plt.plot(trans_times, threshold * np.ones_like(trans_times), 'ro-')
plt.show()
The output:
Measured periods at threshold 0.5:
[ 6.29283207 6.29118893 6.27425846 6.29580066 6.28310224 6.30335003]
Min: 6.2743
Max: 6.3034
Mean: 6.2901
Std dev: 0.0092793
You could use numpy.histogram and/or matplotlib.pyplot.hist to further analyze the array returned by periods(t, y, threshold).
This is not an answer for your question, just and suggestion that may help. Im writing it here because i cant put image in comment.
I think you should normalize data somehow, before any processing.
After normalization to range of 0...1 you should apply your filter.
If you're really only interested in the period, you could plot the Fourier Transform, you'll have a peak where the frequency of the signals occurs (and so you have the period). The wider the peak in the Fourier domain, the larger the error in your period measurement
import numpy as np
data = np.asarray(my_data)
np.fft.fft(data)
Your filtering is fine, it's basically the same as a schmitt trigger, but the main problem you might have with it is speed. The benefit of using Numpy is that it can be as fast as C, whereas you have to iterate once over each element.
You can achieve something similar using the median filter from SciPy. The following should achieve a similar result (and not be dependent on any magnitudes):
filtered = scipy.signal.medfilt(raw)
filtered = numpy.where(filtered > numpy.mean(filtered), 1, 0)
You can tune the strength of the median filtering with medfilt(raw, n_samples), n_samples defaults to 3.
As for the error, that's going to be very subjective. One way would be to discretise the signal without filtering and then compare for differences. For example:
discrete = numpy.where(raw > numpy.mean(raw), 1, 0)
errors = np.count_nonzero(filtered != discrete)
error_rate = errors / len(discrete)