??? Index exceeds matrix dimensions PSD Proplem - matlab

Hey guys I am trying to find the Power Spectral Density of a .wav signal i recorded which is essentially a sine immersed in noise. The function that i have written is supposed to take records all of 1024 points in length and use it to find the Gxx of the signal by finding Gxx per record and then adding them and dividing them by the number of records better explained in the algorithm below:
a. Step through the wav file and extract the first record length (e.g. 1 to 1024 points). (Note that the record length is your new ā€œNā€, hence the frequency spacing changes in accordance with this, NOT the total length of the wav file).
b. Perform the normal PSD function on this record.
c. Store this vector.
d. Extract the next 1024 points in the wav file (e.g. 1025:2048) and perform PSD on this record.
e. Add this to the previously stored record and continue through steps c to e until you reach the end of your wav file or the total number of records you want. (Remember that total records*record length must be less than the total length of the wavfile!)
f. Divide the PSD by the number of averages (or number of records).
This is your averaged PSD
The function I created is as follows:
%Function to plot PSD
function[f1, GxxAv] = HW3_A_Fn_811003472_RCT(x,fs,NumRec)
Gxx = 0;
GxxAv = 0;
N = 1024;
df = fs/N;
f1 = 0:df:fs/2;
dt = 1/fs;
T = N*dt;
q = 0;
e = 1;
for i = 1:NumRec;
for r = (1+q):(N*e);
L = x(1+q:N*e);
M = length(L);
Xm = fft(L).*dt;
aXm = abs(Xm);
Gxx(1)=(1/T).*(aXm(1).*aXm(1));
for k = 2:(M/2);
Gxx(k) = (2/T) *(aXm(k).*(aXm(k)));
%Gxx = Gxx + Gxx1(k);
end
Gxx((M/2)+1)= (1/T)*(aXm((M/2)+1)).*(aXm((M/2)+1));
q = q+1024;
e = e+1;
%Gxx = Gxx + Gxx1((M/2)+1);
end
GxxAv = GxxAv + Gxx;
%Gxx = Gxx + Gxx1;
end
GxxAv = GxxAv/NumRec;
And the code I used to call this function is as follows:
[x,fs] = wavread('F:\Final\sem1Y3\Acoustics\sinenoise5s.wav');
[f1,GxxAv] = HW3_A_Fn_811003472_RCT(x,fs,100); %where 100 is the number of records to generated
plot(f1,GxxAv)
xlabel ('Frequency / Hz', 'fontsize', 18)
ylabel ('Amplitude Squared per Frequency / WU^2/Hz', 'fontsize', 18)
title ('Plot of the single sided PSD, using Averaging', 'fontsize', 18)
grid on
When Trying to plot this graph the following error was observed:
??? Index exceeds matrix dimensions.
Error in ==> HW3_A_Fn_811003472_RCT at 19
L = x(1+q:N*e);
Error in ==> HW3_A_3_811003472_RCT at 3
[f1,GxxAv] = HW3_A_Fn_811003472_RCT(x,fs,100); %where 100 is the number of records to generated
I am not sure how to fix it and i have tried many different methods but still i get this error. I am not too familiar with Matlab but all I really want to do for line 19 is to go like:
x(1:1024), x(1025:2048), x(2049:3072), x(3072:4096)...etc to 100 records
Any ideas??? Thanks

This is obviously homework, so I am not gonna do your work for you. But there quite some things wrong with your code. Start by fixing all of those first:
Use more appropriate function names, homework123 is not a good name to describe what the function does.
Use more appropriate variable names. More standard in this context would be nfft instead of N and n_average instead of NumRec. I don't care about the exact thing you use, but it should describe exactly what the variable does.
Your error message clearly hints that you are trying to index x in some illegal way. Start with making a loop that just prints the right indices (1..1024, 1025..2048, ...) and make sure it follows your instruction E. Only when this works as expected add the rest of the code.
you use a triple-nested for-loop. You only need a single for-loop or while-loop to solve this problem.

Related

Repeated option pricing with Sobol Sequence (Matlab)

Trying to calculate the variance of a European option using repeated trial (instead of 1 trial). I want to compare the variance using the standard randn function and the sobolset. I'm not quite sure how to draw repeated samples from the latter.
Generating from randn is easy:
num_steps = 100;
num_paths = 10;
z = rand(num_steps, mum_paths); % 100 paths, for 10 trials
Once I have this, I can loop through all the 10 columns of the z matrix, and can also repeat the experiment many times, as the randn function will provide a new random variable set everytime.
for exp_num = 1: 20
for col = 1: 10
price_vec = z(:, col);
end
end
I'm not quite sure how to do this with the sobolset. I understand I can create a matrix of dimensions to start with (say 100* 10). I can loop through as above through all the columns for the first experiment. However, when I try the next experiment (#2), the loop starts from the beginning and all the numbers are the same. Meaning I don't get any variation in my pricing. It seems I will need to find a way to randomize the column selection at the start of every experiment number. Is there a better way to do this??
data1 = sobolset(1000, 'Skip', 1000, 'Leap', 100)
data2 = net(test1, 10)
for exp_num = 1: 20
% how do I change the start of the column selection here, so that the next data3 is different from %the one in the previous exp_num?
for col = 1:10
data3(:, col) = data(2:, col)
% perform calculations
end
end
I hope this is making sense....
Thanks for the help!
Update: 8/21
I tried the following:
num_runs = 100
num_samples = 1000
for j = 1: num_runs
for i = 1 : num_samples
sobol_set = sobolset(num_samples,'Skip',j*50,'Leap',1e2);
sobol_set = net(sobol_set, 5);
sobol_seq = sobol_set(:, i)';
z_uncorr = norminv(sobol_seq, 0, 1)
% do pricing with z_uncorr through some function F
end
end
After generating 100 prices (through some function F, mentioned above), I find that the variance of the 100 prices is higher than that I get from the standard pseudo random numbers. This should not be the case. I think I'm still not sampling correctly from the sobolset. Any advice would be appreciated.

defining the X values for a code

I have this task to create a script that acts similarly to normcdf on matlab.
x=linspace(-5,5,1000); %values for x
p= 1/sqrt(2*pi) * exp((-x.^2)/2); % THE PDF for the standard normal
t=cumtrapz(x,p); % the CDF for the standard normal distribution
plot(x,t); %shows the graph of the CDF
The problem is when the t values are assigned to 1:1000 instead of -5:5 in increments. I want to know how to assign the correct x values, that is -5:5,1000 to the t values output? such as when I do t(n) I get the same result as normcdf(n).
Just to clarify: the problem is I cannot simply say t(-5) and get result =1 as I would in normcdf(1) because the cumtrapz calculated values are assigned to x=1:1000 instead of -5 to 5.
Updated answer
Ok, having read your comment; here is how to do what you want:
x = linspace(-5,5,1000);
p = 1/sqrt(2*pi) * exp((-x.^2)/2);
cdf = cumtrapz(x,p);
q = 3; % Query point
disp(normcdf(q)) % For reference
[~,I] = min(abs(x-q)); % Find closest index
disp(cdf(I)) % Show the value
Sadly, there is no matlab syntax which will do this nicely in one line, but if you abstract finding the closest index into a different function, you can do this:
cdf(findClosest(x,q))
function I = findClosest(x,q)
if q>max(x) || q<min(x)
warning('q outside the range of x');
end
[~,I] = min(abs(x-q));
end
Also; if you are certain that the exact value of the query point q exists in x, you can just do
cdf(x==q);
But beware of floating point errors though. You may think that a certain range outght to contain a certain value, but little did you know it was different by a tiny roundoff erorr. You can see that in action for example here:
x1 = linspace(0,1,1000); % Range
x2 = asin(sin(x1)); % Ought to be the same thing
plot((x1-x2)/eps); grid on; % But they differ by rougly 1 unit of machine precision
Old answer
As far as I can tell, running your code does reproduce the result of normcdf(x) well... If you want to do exactly what normcdf does them use erfc.
close all; clear; clc;
x = linspace(-5,5,1000);
cdf = normcdf(x); % Result of normcdf for comparison
%% 1 Trapezoidal integration of normal pd
p = 1/sqrt(2*pi) * exp((-x.^2)/2);
cdf1 = cumtrapz(x,p);
%% 2 But error function IS the integral of the normal pd
cdf2 = (1+erf(x/sqrt(2)))/2;
%% 3 Or, even better, use the error function complement (works better for large negative x)
cdf3 = erfc(-x/sqrt(2))/2;
fprintf('1: Mean error = %.2d\n',mean(abs(cdf1-cdf)));
fprintf('2: Mean error = %.2d\n',mean(abs(cdf2-cdf)));
fprintf('3: Mean error = %.2d\n',mean(abs(cdf3-cdf)));
plot(x,cdf1,x,cdf2,x,cdf3,x,cdf,'k--');
This gives me
1: Mean error = 7.83e-07
2: Mean error = 1.41e-17
3: Mean error = 00 <- Because that is literally what normcdf is doing
If your goal is not not to use predefined matlab funcitons, but instead to calculate the result numerically (i.e. calculate the error function) then it's an interesting challange which you can read about for example here or in this stats stackexchange post. Just as an example, the following piece of code calculates the error function by implementing eq. 2 form the first link:
nerf = #(x,n) (-1)^n*2/sqrt(pi)*x.^(2*n+1)./factorial(n)/(2*n+1);
figure(1); hold on;
temp = zeros(size(x)); p =[];
for n = 0:20
temp = temp + nerf(x/sqrt(2),n);
if~mod(n,3)
p(end+1) = plot(x,(1+temp)/2);
end
end
ylim([-1,2]);
title('\Sigma_{n=0}^{inf} ( 2/sqrt(pi) ) \times ( (-1)^n x^{2*n+1} ) \div ( n! (2*n+1) )');
p(end+1) = plot(x,cdf,'k--');
legend(p,'n = 0','\Sigma_{n} 0->3','\Sigma_{n} 0->6','\Sigma_{n} 0->9',...
'\Sigma_{n} 0->12','\Sigma_{n} 0->15','\Sigma_{n} 0->18','normcdf(x)',...
'location','southeast');
grid on; box on;
xlabel('x'); ylabel('norm. cdf approximations');
Marcin's answer suggests a way to find the nearest sample point. It is easier, IMO, to interpolate. Given x and t as defined in the question,
interp1(x,t,n)
returns the estimated value of the CDF at x==n, for whatever value of n. But note that, for values outside the computed range, it will extrapolate and produce unreliable values.
You can define an anonymous function that works like normcdf:
my_normcdf = #(n)interp1(x,t,n);
my_normcdf(-5)
Try replacing x with 0.01 when you call cumtrapz. You can either use a vector or a scalar spacing for cumtrapz (https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/cumtrapz.html), and this might solve your problem. Also, have you checked the original x-values? Is the problem with linspace (i.e. you are not getting the correct x vector), or with cumtrapz?

Finding the longest linear section of non-linear plot in MATLAB

Apologies for the long post but this takes a bit to explain. I'm trying to make a script that finds the longest linear portion of a plot. Sample data is in a csv file here, it is stress and strain data for calculating the shear modulus of 3D printed samples. The code I have so far is the following:
x_data = [];
y_data = [];
x_data = Data(:,1);
y_data = Data(:,2);
plot(x_data,y_data);
grid on;
answer1 = questdlg('Would you like to load last attempt''s numbers?');
switch answer1
case 'Yes'
[sim_slopes,reg_data] = regr_and_longest_part(new_x_data,new_y_data,str2num(answer2{3}),str2num(answer2{2}),K);
case 'No'
disp('Take a look at the plot, find a range estimate, and press any button to continue');
pause;
prompt = {'Eliminate values ABOVE this x-value:','Eliminate values BELOW this x-value:','Size of divisions on x-axis:','Factor for similarity of slopes:'};
dlg_title = 'Point elimination';
num_lines = 1;
defaultans = {'0','0','0','0.1'};
if isempty(answer2) < 1
defaultans = {answer2{1},answer2{2},answer2{3},answer2{4}};
end
answer2 = inputdlg(prompt,dlg_title,num_lines,defaultans);
uv_of_x_range = str2num(answer2{1});
lv_of_x_range = str2num(answer2{2});
x_div_size = str2num(answer2{3});
K = str2num(answer2{4});
close all;
iB = find(x_data > str2num(answer2{1}),1,'first');
iS = find(x_data > str2num(answer2{2}),1,'first');
new_x_data = x_data(iS:iB);
new_y_data = y_data(iS:iB);
[sim_slopes, reg_data] = regr_and_longest_part(new_x_data,new_y_data,str2num(answer2{3}),str2num(answer2{2}),K);
end
[longest_section0, Midx]= max(sim_slopes(:,4)-sim_slopes(:,3));
longest_section=1+longest_section0;
long_sec_x_data_start = x_div_size*(sim_slopes(Midx,3)-1)+lv_of_x_range;
long_sec_x_data_end = x_div_size*(sim_slopes(Midx,4)-1)+lv_of_x_range;
long_sec_x_data_start_idx=find(new_x_data >= long_sec_x_data_start,1,'first');
long_sec_x_data_end_idx=find(new_x_data >= long_sec_x_data_end,1,'first');
long_sec_x_data = new_x_data(long_sec_x_data_start_idx:long_sec_x_data_end_idx);
long_sec_y_data = new_y_data(long_sec_x_data_start_idx:long_sec_x_data_end_idx);
[b_long_sec, longes_section_reg_data] = robustfit(long_sec_x_data,long_sec_y_data);
plot(long_sec_x_data,b_long_sec(1)+b_long_sec(2)*long_sec_x_data,'LineWidth',3,'LineStyle',':','Color','k');
function [sim_slopes,reg_data] = regr_and_longest_part(x_points,y_points,x_div,lv,K)
reg_data = cell(1,3);
scatter(x_points,y_points,'.');
grid on;
hold on;
uv = lv+x_div;
ii=0;
while lv <= x_points(end)
if uv > x_points(end)
uv = x_points(end);
end
ii=ii+1;
indices = find(x_points>lv & x_points<uv);
temp_x_points = x_points((indices));
temp_y_points = y_points((indices));
if length(temp_x_points) <= 2
break;
end
[b,stats] = robustfit(temp_x_points,temp_y_points);
reg_data{ii,1} = b(1);
reg_data{ii,2} = b(2);
reg_data{ii,3} = length(indices);
plot(temp_x_points,b(1)+b(2)*temp_x_points,'LineWidth',2);
lv = lv+x_div;
uv = lv+x_div;
end
sim_slopes = NaN(length(reg_data),4);
sim_slopes(1,:) = [reg_data{1,1},0,1,1];
idx=1;
for ii=2:length(reg_data)
coff =sim_slopes(idx,1);
if abs(reg_data{ii,1}-coff) <= K*coff
C=zeros(ii-sim_slopes(idx,3)+1,1);
for kk=sim_slopes(idx,3):ii
C(kk)=reg_data{kk,1};
end
sim_slopes(idx,1)=mean(C);
sim_slopes(idx,2)=std(C);
sim_slopes(idx,4)=ii;
else
idx = idx + 1;
sim_slopes(idx,1)=reg_data{ii,1};
sim_slopes(idx,2)=0;
sim_slopes(idx,3)=ii;
sim_slopes(idx,4)=ii;
end
end
end
Apologies for the code not being well optimized, I'm still relatively new to MATLAB. I did not use derivatives because my data is relatively noisy and derivation might have made it worse.
I've managed to get the get the code to find the longest straight part of the plot by splitting the data up into sections called x_div_size then performing a robustfit on each section, the results of which are written into reg_data. The code then runs through reg_data and finds which lines have the most similar slopes, determined by the K factor, by calculating the average of the slopes in a section of the plot and makes a note of it in sim_slopes. It then finds the longest interval with max(sim_slopes(:,4)-sim_slopes(:,3)) and performs a regression on it to give the final answer.
The problem is that it will only consider the first straight portion that it comes across. When the data is plotted, it has a few parts where it seems straightest:
As an example, when I run the script with answer2 = {'0.2','0','0.0038','0.3'} I get the following, where the black line is the straightest part found by the code:
I have the following questions:
It's clear that from about x = 0.04 to x = 0.2 there is a long straight part and I'm not sure why the script is not finding it. Playing around with different values the script always seems to pick the first longest straight part, ignoring subsequent ones.
MATLAB complains that Warning: Iteration limit reached. because there are more than 50 regressions to perform. Is there a way to bypass this limit on robustfit?
When generating sim_slopes there might be section of the plot whose slope is too different from the average of the previous slopes so it gets marked as the end of a long section. But that section sometimes is sandwiched between several other sections on either side which instead have similar slopes. How would it be possible to tell the script to ignore one wayward section and to continue as if it falls within the tolerance allowed by the K value?
Take a look at the Douglas-Peucker algorithm. If you think of your (x,y) values as the vertices of an (open) polygon, this algorithm will simplify it for you, such that the largest distance from the simplified polygon to the original is smaller than some threshold you can choose. The simplified polygon will be the set of straight lines. Find the two vertices that are furthest apart, and you're done.
MATLAB has an implementation in the Mapping Toolbox called reducem. You might also find an implementation on the File Exchange (but be careful, there is also really bad code on there). Or, you can roll your own, it's quite a simple algorithm.
You can also try using the ischange function to detect changes in the intercept and slope of the data, and then extract the longest portion from that.
Using the sample data you provided, here is what I see from a basic attempt:
>> T = readtable('Data.csv');
>> T = rmmissing(T); % Remove rows with NaN
>> T = groupsummary(T,'Var1','mean'); % Average duplicate timestamps
>> [tf,slopes,intercepts] = ischange(T.mean_Var2, 'linear', 'SamplePoints', T.Var1); % find changes
>> plot(T.Var1, T.mean_Var2, T.Var1, slopes.*T.Var1 + intercepts)
which generates the plot
You should be able to extract the longest segment based on the indices given by find(tf).
You can also tune the parameters of ischange to get fewer or more segments. Adding the name-value pair 'MaxNumChanges' with a value of 4 or 5 produces more linear segments with a tighter fit to the curve, for example, which effectively removes the kink in the plot that you see.

Matlab fourier descriptors what's wrong?

I am using Gonzalez frdescp function to get Fourier descriptors of a boundary. I use this code, and I get two totally different sets of numbers describing two identical but different in scale shapes.
So what is wrong?
im = imread('c:\classes\a1.png');
im = im2bw(im);
b = bwboundaries(im);
f = frdescp(b{1}); // fourier descriptors for the boundary of the first object ( my pic only contains one object anyway )
// Normalization
f = f(2:20); // getting the first 20 & deleting the dc component
f = abs(f) ;
f = f/f(1);
Why do I get different descriptors for identical - but different in scale - two circles?
The problem is that the frdescp code (I used this code, that should be the same as referred by you) is written also in order to center the Fourier descriptors.
If you want to describe your shape in a correct way, it is mandatory to mantain some descriptors that are symmetric with respect to the one representing the DC component.
The following image summarize the concept:
In order to solve your problem (and others like yours), I wrote the following two functions:
function descriptors = fourierdescriptor( boundary )
%I assume that the boundary is a N x 2 matrix
%Also, N must be an even number
np = size(boundary, 1);
s = boundary(:, 1) + i*boundary(:, 2);
descriptors = fft(s);
descriptors = [descriptors((1+(np/2)):end); descriptors(1:np/2)];
end
function significativedescriptors = getsignificativedescriptors( alldescriptors, num )
%num is the number of significative descriptors (in your example, is was 20)
%In the following, I assume that num and size(alldescriptors,1) are even numbers
dim = size(alldescriptors, 1);
if num >= dim
significativedescriptors = alldescriptors;
else
a = (dim/2 - num/2) + 1;
b = dim/2 + num/2;
significativedescriptors = alldescriptors(a : b);
end
end
Know, you can use the above functions as follows:
im = imread('test.jpg');
im = im2bw(im);
b = bwboundaries(im);
b = b{1};
%force the number of boundary points to be even
if mod(size(b,1), 2) ~= 0
b = [b; b(end, :)];
end
%define the number of significative descriptors I want to extract (it must be even)
numdescr = 20;
%Now, you can extract all fourier descriptors...
f = fourierdescriptor(b);
%...and get only the most significative:
f_sign = getsignificativedescriptors(f, numdescr);
I just went through the same problem with you.
According to this link, if you want invariant to scaling, make the comparison ratio-like, for example by dividing every Fourier coefficient by the DC-coefficient. f*1 = f1/f[0], f*[2]/f[0], and so on. Thus, you need to use the DC-coefficient where the f(1) in your code is not the actual DC-coefficient after your step "f = f(2:20); % getting the first 20 & deleting the dc component". I think the problem can be solved by keeping the value of the DC-coefficient first, the code after adjusted should be like follows:
% Normalization
DC = f(1);
f = f(2:20); % getting the first 20 & deleting the dc component
f = abs(f) ; % use magnitudes to be invariant to translation & rotation
f = f/DC; % divide the Fourier coefficients by the DC-coefficient to be invariant to scale

How can I speed up this call to quantile in Matlab?

I have a MATLAB routine with one rather obvious bottleneck. I've profiled the function, with the result that 2/3 of the computing time is used in the function levels:
The function levels takes a matrix of floats and splits each column into nLevels buckets, returning a matrix of the same size as the input, with each entry replaced by the number of the bucket it falls into.
To do this I use the quantile function to get the bucket limits, and a loop to assign the entries to buckets. Here's my implementation:
function [Y q] = levels(X,nLevels)
% "Assign each of the elements of X to an integer-valued level"
p = linspace(0, 1.0, nLevels+1);
q = quantile(X,p);
if isvector(q)
q=transpose(q);
end
Y = zeros(size(X));
for i = 1:nLevels
% "The variables g and l indicate the entries that are respectively greater than
% or less than the relevant bucket limits. The line Y(g & l) = i is assigning the
% value i to any element that falls in this bucket."
if i ~= nLevels % "The default; doesnt include upper bound"
g = bsxfun(#ge,X,q(i,:));
l = bsxfun(#lt,X,q(i+1,:));
else % "For the final level we include the upper bound"
g = bsxfun(#ge,X,q(i,:));
l = bsxfun(#le,X,q(i+1,:));
end
Y(g & l) = i;
end
Is there anything I can do to speed this up? Can the code be vectorized?
If I understand correctly, you want to know how many items fell in each bucket.
Use:
n = hist(Y,nbins)
Though I am not sure that it will help in the speedup. It is just cleaner this way.
Edit : Following the comment:
You can use the second output parameter of histc
[n,bin] = histc(...) also returns an index matrix bin. If x is a vector, n(k) = >sum(bin==k). bin is zero for out of range values. If x is an M-by-N matrix, then
How About this
function [Y q] = levels(X,nLevels)
p = linspace(0, 1.0, nLevels+1);
q = quantile(X,p);
Y = zeros(size(X));
for i = 1:numel(q)-1
Y = Y+ X>=q(i);
end
This results in the following:
>>X = [3 1 4 6 7 2];
>>[Y, q] = levels(X,2)
Y =
1 1 2 2 2 1
q =
1 3.5 7
You could also modify the logic line to ensure values are less than the start of the next bin. However, I don't think it is necessary.
I think you shoud use histc
[~,Y] = histc(X,q)
As you can see in matlab's doc:
Description
n = histc(x,edges) counts the number of values in vector x that fall
between the elements in the edges vector (which must contain
monotonically nondecreasing values). n is a length(edges) vector
containing these counts. No elements of x can be complex.
I made a couple of refinements (including one inspired by Aero Engy in another answer) that have resulted in some improvements. To test them out, I created a random matrix of a million rows and 100 columns to run the improved functions on:
>> x = randn(1000000,100);
First, I ran my unmodified code, with the following results:
Note that of the 40 seconds, around 14 of them are spent computing the quantiles - I can't expect to improve this part of the routine (I assume that Mathworks have already optimized it, though I guess that to assume makes an...)
Next, I modified the routine to the following, which should be faster and has the advantage of being fewer lines as well!
function [Y q] = levels(X,nLevels)
p = linspace(0, 1.0, nLevels+1);
q = quantile(X,p);
if isvector(q), q = transpose(q); end
Y = ones(size(X));
for i = 2:nLevels
Y = Y + bsxfun(#ge,X,q(i,:));
end
The profiling results with this code are:
So it is 15 seconds faster, which represents a 150% speedup of the portion of code that is mine, rather than MathWorks.
Finally, following a suggestion of Andrey (again in another answer) I modified the code to use the second output of the histc function, which assigns entries to bins. It doesn't treat the columns independently, so I had to loop over the columns manually, but it seems to be performing really well. Here's the code:
function [Y q] = levels(X,nLevels)
p = linspace(0,1,nLevels+1);
q = quantile(X,p);
if isvector(q), q = transpose(q); end
q(end,:) = 2 * q(end,:);
Y = zeros(size(X));
for k = 1:size(X,2)
[junk Y(:,k)] = histc(X(:,k),q(:,k));
end
And the profiling results:
We now spend only 4.3 seconds in codes outside the quantile function, which is around a 500% speedup over what I wrote originally. I've spent a bit of time writing this answer because I think it's turned into a nice example of how you can use the MATLAB profiler and StackExchange in combination to get much better performance from your code.
I'm happy with this result, although of course I'll continue to be pleased to hear other answers. At this stage the main performance increase will come from increasing the performance of the part of the code that currently calls quantile. I can't see how to do this immediately, but maybe someone else here can. Thanks again!
You can sort the columns and divide+round the inverse indexes:
function Y = levels(X,nLevels)
% "Assign each of the elements of X to an integer-valued level"
[S,IX]=sort(X);
[grid1,grid2]=ndgrid(1:size(IX,1),1:size(IX,2));
invIX=zeros(size(X));
invIX(sub2ind(size(X),IX(:),grid2(:)))=grid1;
Y=ceil(invIX/size(X,1)*nLevels);
Or you can use tiedrank:
function Y = levels(X,nLevels)
% "Assign each of the elements of X to an integer-valued level"
R=tiedrank(X);
Y=ceil(R/size(X,1)*nLevels);
Surprisingly, both these solutions are slightly slower than the quantile+histc solution.