Points distribution in n-dimension - matlab

Question

How to distribute the points to be like Fig.A
This matlab code for Fig. B :
N = 30; % number of points
r = 0.5; % r = radius
d = 50; % dimension
C_point = 0; % center point
figure, clf
C = ones(1, d) * C_point;
C_rep = repmat( C,N,1);
X = randn(N,d);
s2 = sum(X.^2,2) ;
radius = r * (rand(N,1).^(1/d));
X = X.*repmat(radius./sqrt(s2),1,d) + C_rep;
%% Plot 2D
t = linspace(0, 2*pi, 100);
x = r*cos(t) + C(1);
y = r*sin(t) + C(2);
plot(x,y,'b')
hold on
plot(C(1),C(2),'b.', 'MarkerSize', 10) % center point
hold on
plot(X(:,1), X(:,2),'r.','markersize',10);
axis equal;rotate3d off; rotate3d on;drawnow;shg;
hold on
ax = axis;
Source of the code
What I should change to be like fig. A

Answer 1

The OP's code computes points uniformly distributed within a d-dimensional box, projects those onto a d-dimensional sphere, then samples the radius to move them inside the d-dimensional ball. This is perfect except that the points inside the box, when projected onto the sphere, do not form a uniform distribution on that sphere. If instead you find random points distributed in a Gaussian distribution, you are guaranteed uniform angle distribution.
First compute points with a Gaussian distribution in d dimensions (I do all here with minimal changes to the OP's code):
N = 1000; % number of points
r = 0.5; % r = radius
d = 3; % dimension
C_point = 0; % center point
C = ones(1,d) * C_point;
C_rep = repmat(C,N,1);
X = randn(N,d);
Note that I use randn, not rand. randn creates a Gaussian distribution.
Next we normalize the vectors so the points move to the sphere:
nX = sqrt(sum(X.^2,2));
X = X./repmat(nX,1,d);
These points are uniformly distributed, which you can verify by scatter3(X(:,1),X(:,2),X(:,3)); axis equal and turning the display around (a 2D rendering doesn't do it justice). This is the reason I set d=3 above, and N=1000. I wanted to be able to plot the points and see lots of them.
Next we compute, as you already did, a random distance to the origin, and correct it for the dimensionality:
radius = r * (rand(N,1).^(1/d));
X = X.*repmat(radius,1,d) + C_rep;
X now is distributed uniformly in the ball. Again, scatter3(X(:,1),X(:,2),X(:,3)); axis equal shows this.
However, if you set d=50 and then plot only two dimensions of your data, you will not see the data filling the circle. And you will not see a uniform distribution either. This is because you are projecting a 50-D ball onto 2 dimensions, this simply does not work. You either have to trust the math, or you have to slice the data:
figure, hold on
t = linspace(0, 2*pi, 100);
x = r*cos(t) + C(1);
y = r*sin(t) + C(2);
plot(x,y,'b')
plot(C(1),C(2),'b.', 'MarkerSize', 10) % center point
axis equal
I = all(abs(X(:,3:d))<0.1,2);
plot(X(I,1), X(I,2),'r.','markersize',10);
The I there indexes points that are close to the origin in dimensions perpendicular to the first two shown. Again, with d=50 you will have very few points there, so you will need to set N very large! To see the same density of points as in the case above, for every dimension you add, you need to multiply N by 10. So for d=5 you'd have N=1000*10*10=1e5, and for d=50 you'd need N=1e50. That is totally impossible to compute, of course.