We Keep Coding

2D interpolate list of many points [duplicate]

So, I have three numpy arrays which store latitude, longitude, and some property value on a grid -- that is, I have LAT(y,x), LON(y,x), and, say temperature T(y,x), for some limits of x and y. The grid isn't necessarily regular -- in fact, it's tripolar.
I then want to interpolate these property (temperature) values onto a bunch of different lat/lon points (stored as lat1(t), lon1(t), for about 10,000 t...) which do not fall on the actual grid points. I've tried matplotlib.mlab.griddata, but that takes far too long (it's not really designed for what I'm doing, after all). I've also tried scipy.interpolate.interp2d, but I get a MemoryError (my grids are about 400x400).
Is there any sort of slick, preferably fast way of doing this? I can't help but think the answer is something obvious... Thanks!!

Try the combination of inverse-distance weighting and
scipy.spatial.KDTree
described in SO
inverse-distance-weighted-idw-interpolation-with-python.
Kd-trees
work nicely in 2d 3d ..., inverse-distance weighting is smooth and local,
and the k= number of nearest neighbours can be varied to tradeoff speed / accuracy.

There is a nice inverse distance example by Roger Veciana i Rovira along with some code using GDAL to write to geotiff if you're into that.
This is of coarse to a regular grid, but assuming you project the data first to a pixel grid with pyproj or something, all the while being careful what projection is used for your data.
A copy of his algorithm and example script:
from math import pow
from math import sqrt
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
def pointValue(x,y,power,smoothing,xv,yv,values):
nominator=0
denominator=0
for i in range(0,len(values)):
dist = sqrt((x-xv[i])*(x-xv[i])+(y-yv[i])*(y-yv[i])+smoothing*smoothing);
#If the point is really close to one of the data points, return the data point value to avoid singularities
if(dist<0.0000000001):
return values[i]
nominator=nominator+(values[i]/pow(dist,power))
denominator=denominator+(1/pow(dist,power))
#Return NODATA if the denominator is zero
if denominator > 0:
value = nominator/denominator
else:
value = -9999
return value
def invDist(xv,yv,values,xsize=100,ysize=100,power=2,smoothing=0):
valuesGrid = np.zeros((ysize,xsize))
for x in range(0,xsize):
for y in range(0,ysize):
valuesGrid[y][x] = pointValue(x,y,power,smoothing,xv,yv,values)
return valuesGrid
if __name__ == "__main__":
power=1
smoothing=20
#Creating some data, with each coodinate and the values stored in separated lists
xv = [10,60,40,70,10,50,20,70,30,60]
yv = [10,20,30,30,40,50,60,70,80,90]
values = [1,2,2,3,4,6,7,7,8,10]
#Creating the output grid (100x100, in the example)
ti = np.linspace(0, 100, 100)
XI, YI = np.meshgrid(ti, ti)
#Creating the interpolation function and populating the output matrix value
ZI = invDist(xv,yv,values,100,100,power,smoothing)
# Plotting the result
n = plt.normalize(0.0, 100.0)
plt.subplot(1, 1, 1)
plt.pcolor(XI, YI, ZI)
plt.scatter(xv, yv, 100, values)
plt.title('Inv dist interpolation - power: ' + str(power) + ' smoothing: ' + str(smoothing))
plt.xlim(0, 100)
plt.ylim(0, 100)
plt.colorbar()
plt.show()

There's a bunch of options here, which one is best will depend on your data...
However I don't know of an out-of-the-box solution for you
You say your input data is from tripolar data. There are three main cases for how this data could be structured.
Sampled from a 3d grid in tripolar space, projected back to 2d LAT, LON data.
Sampled from a 2d grid in tripolar space, projected into 2d LAT LON data.
Unstructured data in tripolar space projected into 2d LAT LON data
The easiest of these is 2. Instead of interpolating in LAT LON space, "just" transform your point back into the source space and interpolate there.
Another option that works for 1 and 2 is to search for the cells that maps from tripolar space to cover your sample point. (You can use a BSP or grid type structure to speed up this search) Pick one of the cells, and interpolate inside it.
Finally there's a heap of unstructured interpolation options .. but they tend to be slow.
A personal favourite of mine is to use a linear interpolation of the nearest N points, finding those N points can again be done with gridding or a BSP. Another good option is to Delauney triangulate the unstructured points and interpolate on the resulting triangular mesh.
Personally if my mesh was case 1, I'd use an unstructured strategy as I'd be worried about having to handle searching through cells with overlapping projections. Choosing the "right" cell would be difficult.

I suggest you taking a look at GRASS (an open source GIS package) interpolation features (http://grass.ibiblio.org/gdp/html_grass62/v.surf.bspline.html). It's not in python but you can reimplement it or interface with C code.

Am I right in thinking your data grids look something like this (red is the old data, blue is the new interpolated data)?
alt text http://www.geekops.co.uk/photos/0000-00-02%20%28Forum%20images%29/DataSeparation.png
This might be a slightly brute-force-ish approach, but what about rendering your existing data as a bitmap (opengl will do simple interpolation of colours for you with the right options configured and you could render the data as triangles which should be fairly fast). You could then sample pixels at the locations of the new points.
Alternatively, you could sort your first set of points spatially and then find the closest old points surrounding your new point and interpolate based on the distances to those points.

There is a FORTRAN library called BIVAR, which is very suitable for this problem. With a few modifications you can make it usable in python using f2py.
From the description:
BIVAR is a FORTRAN90 library which interpolates scattered bivariate data, by Hiroshi Akima.
BIVAR accepts a set of (X,Y) data points scattered in 2D, with associated Z data values, and is able to construct a smooth interpolation function Z(X,Y), which agrees with the given data, and can be evaluated at other points in the plane.

Reducing difference between two graphs by optimizing more than one variable in MATLAB/Python?

Suppose 'h' is a function of x,y,z and t and it gives us a graph line (t,h) (simulated). At the same time we also have observed graph (observed values of h against t). How can I reduce the difference between observed (t,h) and simulated (t,h) graph by optimizing values of x,y and z? I want to change the simulated graph so that it imitates closer and closer to the observed graph in MATLAB/Python. In literature I have read that people have done same thing by Lavenberg-marquardt algorithm but don't know how to do it?

You are actually trying to fit the parameters x,y,z of the parametrized function h(x,y,z;t).
MATLAB
You're right that in MATLAB you should either use lsqcurvefit of the Optimization toolbox, or fit of the Curve Fitting Toolbox (I prefer the latter).
Looking at the documentation of lsqcurvefit:
x = lsqcurvefit(fun,x0,xdata,ydata);
It says in the documentation that you have a model F(x,xdata) with coefficients x and sample points xdata, and a set of measured values ydata. The function returns the least-squares parameter set x, with which your function is closest to the measured values.
Fitting algorithms usually need starting points, some implementations can choose randomly, in case of lsqcurvefit this is what x0 is for. If you have
h = #(x,y,z,t) ... %// actual function here
t_meas = ... %// actual measured times here
h_meas = ... %// actual measured data here
then in the conventions of lsqcurvefit,
fun <--> #(params,t) h(params(1),params(2),params(3),t)
x0 <--> starting guess for [x,y,z]: [x0,y0,z0]
xdata <--> t_meas
ydata <--> h_meas
Your function h(x,y,z,t) should be vectorized in t, such that for vector input in t the return value is the same size as t. Then the call to lsqcurvefit will give you the optimal set of parameters:
x = lsqcurvefit(#(params,t) h(params(1),params(2),params(3),t),[x0,y0,z0],t_meas,h_meas);
h_fit = h(x(1),x(2),x(3),t_meas); %// best guess from curve fitting
Python
In python, you'd have to use the scipy.optimize module, and something like scipy.optimize.curve_fit in particular. With the above conventions you need something along the lines of this:
import scipy.optimize as opt
popt,pcov = opt.curve_fit(lambda t,x,y,z: h(x,y,z,t), t_meas, y_meas, p0=[x0,y0,z0])
Note that the p0 starting array is optional, but all parameters will be set to 1 if it's missing. The result you need is the popt array, containing the optimal values for [x,y,z]:
x,y,z = popt
h_fit = h(x,y,z,t_meas)

Fast 3D interpolation of atmospheric data in Numpy/Scipy

I am trying to interpolate 3D atmospheric data from one vertical coordinate to another using Numpy/Scipy. For example, I have cubes of temperature and relative humidity, both of which are on constant, regular pressure surfaces. I want to interpolate the relative humidity to constant temperature surface(s).
The exact problem I am trying to solve has been asked previously here, however, the solution there is very slow. In my case, I have approximately 3M points in my cube (30x321x321), and that method takes around 4 minutes to operate on one set of data.
That post is nearly 5 years old. Do newer versions of Numpy/Scipy perhaps have methods that handle this faster? Maybe new sets of eyes looking at the problem have a better approach? I'm open to suggestions.
EDIT:
Slow = 4 minutes for one set of data cubes. I'm not sure how else I can quantify it.
The code being used...
def interpLevel(grid,value,data,interp='linear'):
"""
Interpolate 3d data to a common z coordinate.
Can be used to calculate the wind/pv/whatsoever values for a common
potential temperature / pressure level.
grid : numpy.ndarray
The grid. For example the potential temperature values for the whole 3d
grid.
value : float
The common value in the grid, to which the data shall be interpolated.
For example, 350.0
data : numpy.ndarray
The data which shall be interpolated. For example, the PV values for
the whole 3d grid.
kind : str
This indicates which kind of interpolation will be done. It is directly
passed on to scipy.interpolate.interp1d().
returns : numpy.ndarray
A 2d array containing the *data* values at *value*.
"""
ret = np.zeros_like(data[0,:,:])
for yIdx in xrange(grid.shape[1]):
for xIdx in xrange(grid.shape[2]):
# check if we need to flip the column
if grid[0,yIdx,xIdx] > grid[-1,yIdx,xIdx]:
ind = -1
else:
ind = 1
f = interpolate.interp1d(grid[::ind,yIdx,xIdx], \
data[::ind,yIdx,xIdx], \
kind=interp)
ret[yIdx,xIdx] = f(value)
return ret
EDIT 2:
I could share npy dumps of sample data, if anyone was interested enough to see what I am working with.

Since this is atmospheric data, I imagine that your grid does not have uniform spacing; however if your grid is rectilinear (such that each vertical column has the same set of z-coordinates) then you have some options.
For instance, if you only need linear interpolation (say for a simple visualization), you can just do something like:
# Find nearest grid point
idx = grid[:,0,0].searchsorted(value)
upper = grid[idx,0,0]
lower = grid[idx - 1, 0, 0]
s = (value - lower) / (upper - lower)
result = (1-s) * data[idx - 1, :, :] + s * data[idx, :, :]
(You'll need to add checks for value being out of range, of course).For a grid your size, this will be extremely fast (as in tiny fractions of a second)
You can pretty easily modify the above to perform cubic interpolation if need be; the challenge is in picking the correct weights for non-uniform vertical spacing.
The problem with using scipy.ndimage.map_coordinates is that, although it provides higher order interpolation and can handle arbitrary sample points, it does assume that the input data be uniformly spaced. It will still produce smooth results, but it won't be a reliable approximation.
If your coordinate grid is not rectilinear, so that the z-value for a given index changes for different x and y indices, then the approach you are using now is probably the best you can get without a fair bit of analysis of your particular problem.
UPDATE:
One neat trick (again, assuming that each column has the same, not necessarily regular, coordinates) is to use interp1d to extract the weights doing something like follows:
NZ = grid.shape[0]
zs = grid[:,0,0]
ident = np.identity(NZ)
weight_func = interp1d(zs, ident, 'cubic')
You only need to do the above once per grid; you can even reuse weight_func as long as the vertical coordinates don't change.
When it comes time to interpolate then, weight_func(value) will give you the weights, which you can use to compute a single interpolated value at (x_idx, y_idx) with:
weights = weight_func(value)
interp_val = np.dot(data[:, x_idx, y_idx), weights)
If you want to compute a whole plane of interpolated values, you can use np.inner, although since your z-coordinate comes first, you'll need to do:
result = np.inner(data.T, weights).T
Again, the computation should be practically immediate.

This is quite an old question but the best way to do this nowadays is to use MetPy's interpolate_1d funtion:
https://unidata.github.io/MetPy/latest/api/generated/metpy.interpolate.interpolate_1d.html

There is a new implementation of Numba accelerated interpolation on regular grids in 1, 2, and 3 dimensions:
https://github.com/dbstein/fast_interp
Usage is as follows:
from fast_interp import interp2d
import numpy as np
nx = 50
ny = 37
xv, xh = np.linspace(0, 1, nx, endpoint=True, retstep=True)
yv, yh = np.linspace(0, 2*np.pi, ny, endpoint=False, retstep=True)
x, y = np.meshgrid(xv, yv, indexing='ij')
test_function = lambda x, y: np.exp(x)*np.exp(np.sin(y))
f = test_function(x, y)
test_x = -xh/2.0
test_y = 271.43
fa = test_function(test_x, test_y)
interpolater = interp2d([0,0], [1,2*np.pi], [xh,yh], f, k=5, p=[False,True], e=[1,0])
fe = interpolater(test_x, test_y)

Python - Convolution with a Gaussian

I need to convolute the next curve with a Gaussian function of specific parameters centered at 3934.8A.
The problem I see is that my curve is a discrete array and the Gaussian would be a well define continuos function. How can I make this work?

To do this, you need to create a Gaussian that's discretized at the same spatial scale as your curve, then just convolve.
Specifically, say your original curve has N points that are uniformly spaced along the x-axis (where N will generally be somewhere between 50 and 10,000 or so). Then the point spacing along the x-axis will be (physical range)/(digital range) = (3940-3930)/N, and the code would look like this:
dx = float(3940-3930)/N
gx = np.arange(-3*sigma, 3*sigma, dx)
gaussian = np.exp(-(x/sigma)**2/2)
result = np.convolve(original_curve, gaussian, mode="full")
Here this is a zero-centered gaussian and does not include the offset you refer to (which to me would just add confusion, since the convolution by its nature is a translating operation, so starting with something already translated is confusing).
I highly recommend keeping everything in real, physical units, as I did above. Then it's clear, for example, what the width of the gaussian is, etc.

Fourier smoothing of data set

I am following this link to do a smoothing of my data set.
The technique is based on the principle of removing the higher order terms of the Fourier Transform of the signal, and so obtaining a smoothed function.
This is part of my code:
N = len(y)
y = y.astype(float) # fix issue, see below
yfft = fft(y, N)
yfft[31:] = 0.0 # set higher harmonics to zero
y_smooth = fft(yfft, N)
ax.errorbar(phase, y, yerr = err, fmt='b.', capsize=0, elinewidth=1.0)
ax.plot(phase, y_smooth/30, color='black') #arbitrary normalization, see below
However some things do not work properly.
Indeed, you can check the resulting plot :
The blue points are my data, while the black line should be the smoothed curve.
First of all I had to convert my array of data y by following this discussion.
Second, I just normalized arbitrarily to compare the curve with data, since I don't know why the original curve had values much higher than the data points.
Most importantly, the curve is like "specular" to the data point, and I don't know why this happens.
It would be great to have some advices especially to the third point, and more generally how to optimize the smoothing with this technique for my particular data set shape.

Your problem is probably due to the shifting that the standard FFT does. You can read about it here.
Your data is real, so you can take advantage of symmetries in the FT and use the special function np.fft.rfft
import numpy as np
x = np.arange(40)
y = np.log(x + 1) * np.exp(-x/8.) * x**2 + np.random.random(40) * 15
rft = np.fft.rfft(y)
rft[5:] = 0 # Note, rft.shape = 21
y_smooth = np.fft.irfft(rft)
plt.plot(x, y, label='Original')
plt.plot(x, y_smooth, label='Smoothed')
plt.legend(loc=0)
plt.show()
If you plot the absolute value of rft, you will see that there is almost no information in frequencies beyond 5, so that is why I choose that threshold (and a bit of playing around, too).
Here the results:

From what I can gather you want to build a low pass filter by doing the following:
Move to the frequency domain. (Fourier transform)
Remove undesired frequencies.
Move back to the time domain. (Inverse fourier transform)
Looking at your code, instead of doing 3) you're just doing another fourier transform. Instead, try doing an actual inverse fourier transform to move back to the time domain:
y_smooth = ifft(yfft, N)
Have a look at scipy signal to see a bunch of already available filters.
(Edit: I'd be curious to see the results, do share!)

I would be very cautious in using this technique. By zeroing out frequency components of the FFT you are effectively constructing a brick wall filter in the frequency domain. This will result in convolution with a sinc in the time domain and likely distort the information you want to process. Look up "Gibbs phenomenon" for more information.
You're probably better off designing a low pass filter or using a simple N-point moving average (which is itself a LPF) to accomplish the smoothing.