Directional data is ubiquitous in science. Due to its circular nature such data cannot be analyzed with commonly used statistical techniques. Despite the rapid development of specialized methods for directional statistics over the last fifty years, there is only little software available that makes such methods easy to use for practitioners. Over the last years, I have put together a Matlab toolbox covering most important aspects of directional statistics. It has been selected “Pick-of-the-Week” at MatlabCentral, downloaded 150-300 times per month and is continuously rated above 4.3/5 stars.
- Descriptive statistics: mean, median, dispersion, skewness, kurtosis
- Inferential statistics: nonuniformity tests (parametric and non-parametric), test for mean/median direction, one- and two-factor ANOVA (multisample test), test for symmetry, test for equal concentration parameter, ks-test
- Measures of association: circular-circular, circular-linear
- Von-Mises distribution: random number generation, parameter estimation, pdf
The toolbox is described in detail in the paper (downloaded more than 3000 times per year):
P. Berens, CircStat: A Matlab Toolbox for Circular Statistics, Journal of Statistical Software, Volume 31, Issue 10, 2009
Please cite this paper, when you use the toolbox for your research, as others have before.
I am always happy to get feedback which helps me to improve the toolbox.