How to compute histogram using three variables in MATLAB? - matlab

Question

I have three variables, e.g., latitude, longitude and temperature. For each latitude and longitude, I have corresponding temperature value. I want to plot latitude v/s longitude plot in 5 degree x 5 degree grid , with mean temperature value inserted in that particular grid instead of occurring frequency.
Data= [latGrid,lonGrid] = meshgrid(25:45,125:145);
T = table(latGrid(:),lonGrid(:),randi([0,35],size(latGrid(:))),...
'VariableNames',{'lat','lon','temp'});
At the end, I need it somewhat like the following image:

Answer 1

Sounds to me like you want to scale your grid. The easiest way to do this is to smooth and downsample.
While 2d histograms also bin values into a grid, using a histogram is not the way to find the mean of datapoints in a smooth grid. A histogram counts the occurrence of values in a set of ranges. In a 2d example, a histogram would take the input measurements [1, 3, 3, 5] and count the number of ones, the number of threes, etc. A 2d histogram will count occurrences of pairs of numbers. (You might want to use histogram to help organize a measurements taken at irregular intervals, but that would be a different question)
How to smooth and downsample without the Image Processing Toolbox
Keep your data in the 2d matrix format rather than reshaping it into a table. This makes it easier to find the neighbors of each grid location.
%% Sample Data
[latGrid,lonGrid] = meshgrid(25:45,125:145);
temp = rand(size(latGrid));
There are many tools in Matlab for smoothing matrices. If you want to have the mean of a 5x5 window. You can write a for-loop, use a convolution, or use filter2. My example uses convolution. For more on convolutional filters, I suggest the wikipedia page.
%% Mean filter with conv2
M = ones(5) ./ 25; % 5x5 mean or box blur filter
C_temp = conv2(temp, M, 'valid');
C_temp is a blurry version of the original temperature variable with a slightly smaller size because we can't accurately take the mean of the edges. The border is reduced by a frame of 2 measurements. Now, we just need to take every fifth measurement from C_temp to scale down the grid.
%% Subsample result
C_temp = C_temp(1:5:end, 1:5:end);
% Because we removed a border from C_temp, we also need to remove a border from latGrid and lonGrid
[h, w] = size(latGrid)
latGrid = latGrid(5:5:h-5, 5:5:w-5);
lonGrid = lonGrid(5:5:h-5, 5:5,w-5);
Here's what the steps look like
If you use a slightly more organized, temp variable. It's easier to see that the result is correct.
With Image Processing Toolbox
imresize has a box filter method option that is equivalent to a mean filter. However, you have to do a little calculation to find the scaling factor that is equivalent to using a 5x5 window.
C_temp = imresize(temp, scale, 'box');