diff -r 3a94917224e9 -r 6dfdb6fc9d80 least-squares.org --- a/least-squares.org Fri Apr 16 12:04:03 2010 +0530 +++ b/least-squares.org Fri Apr 16 12:25:39 2010 +0530 @@ -21,6 +21,7 @@ In this tutorial we shall look at obtaining the least squares fit of a given data-set. For this purpose, we shall use the same pendulum data that we used in the tutorial on plotting from files. + Hope you have the file with you. To be able to follow this tutorial comfortably, you should have a working knowledge of arrays, plotting and file reading. @@ -38,59 +39,59 @@ of values for L and the corresponding T^2 values. Using this, we wish to obtain the equation of the straight line. - In matrix form... - {Show a slide here?} - + In matrix form the equation is represented as shown, + Tsq = A.p where Tsq is an NX1 matrix, and A is an NX2 as shown. + And p is a 2X1 matrix of the slope and Y-intercept. In order to + obtain the least square fit curve we need to find the matrix p + + Let's get started. As you can see, the file pendulum.txt + is on our Desktop and hence we navigate to the Desktop by typing + cd Desktop. Let's now fire up IPython: ipython -pylab + We have already seen (in a previous tutorial), how to read a file - and obtain the data set. Let's quickly get the required data + and obtain the data set using loadtxt(). Let's quickly get the required data from our file. - In []: l = [] - In []: t = [] - In []: for line in open('pendulum.txt'): - .... point = line.split() - .... l.append(float(point[0])) - .... t.append(float(point[1])) - .... - .... + l, t = loadtxt('pendulum.txt', unpack=True) - Since, we have learnt to use arrays and know that they are more - efficient, we shall use them. We convert the lists l and t to - arrays and calculate the values of time-period squared. + loadtxt() directly stores the values in the pendulum.txt into arrays l and t + Let's now calculate the values of square of the time-period. - In []: l = array(l) - In []: t = array(t) - In []: tsq = t*t + tsq = t*t Now we shall obtain A, in the desired form using some simple array manipulation - In []: A = array([l, ones_like(l)]) - In []: A = A.T + A = array([l, ones_like(l)]) + + As we have seen in a previous tutorial, ones_like() gives an array similar + in shape to the given array, in this case l, with all the elements as 1. + + A = A.T to get the transpose of the given array. Type A, to confirm that we have obtained the desired array. - In []: A + A Also note the shape of A. - In []: A.shape + A.shape We shall now use the lstsq function, to obtain the coefficients m and c. lstsq returns a lot of things along with these - coefficients. Look at the documentation of lstsq, for more - information. - In []: result = lstsq(A,tsq) + coefficients. We may look at the documentation of lstsq, for more + information by typing lstsq? + result = lstsq(A,tsq) We extract the required coefficients, which is the first element in the list of things that lstsq returns, and store them into the variable coef. - In []: coef = result[0] + coef = result[0] To obtain the plot of the line, we simply use the equation of the line, we have noted before. T^2 = mL + c. - In []: Tline = coef[0]*l + coef[1] - In []: plot(l, Tline) + Tline = coef[0]*l + coef[1] + plot(l, Tline) Also, it would be nice to have a plot of the points. So, - In []: plot(l, tsq, 'o') + plot(l, tsq, 'o') This brings us to the end of this tutorial. In this tutorial, you've learnt how to obtain a least squares fit curve for a given