Polar Histograms in Octave

In this lesson, I'll show you how to create a polar histogram in Octave.

So, what exactly is a polar histogram? It's a bar graph that's constructed on a polar diagram, rather than a Cartesian diagram. The bars are positioned at polar coordinates, and longer bars represent a higher absolute frequency of the polar coordinate. Essentially, the same polar coordinate is repeated multiple times.

Let me give you a practical example.

First, create an array consisting of a series of polar values ranging from 0 to 2π radians (or 0 to 360°).

>> x=[0, pi/2, pi, pi/4, pi/2];

This array contains five values. Note that the value π/2 radians (90°) appears twice in the array, while the other values only appear once.

To draw the polar histogram, you can use the rose() function:

>> PolarGraph = rose(x)

This function will draw the polar histogram using the data from the array x.

However, the lines on the histogram may be difficult to see.

To make them more visible, you can use the set() function to set a thicker line width:

set(PolarGraph,"LineWidth",2);

Now you can see the polar histogram much more clearly.

As you can see, at π/2 (90°), the histogram reaches a radius of 2 because this value appears twice in the array.

All other values have a radius of 1 because they appear only once in the array.

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