R: Median Direction

median.circular {circular} | R Documentation

## Median Direction

### Description

Sample median direction for a vector of circular data

### Usage

    ## S3 method for class 'circular'
    median(x, na.rm = FALSE, ...)

### Arguments

`x` | a vector. The object is coerced to class `circular`.
`na.rm` | logical, indicating if `NA`'s should be omitted.
`...` | NotYetUsed.

### Details

The Definition in equations 2.32 & 2.33 from N.I. Fisher's 'Statistical Analysis of Circular Data', Cambridge Univ. Press 1993. is implemented. Since version 0.4-4, the algorithm (not the definition) for the calculation of the median is changed. For a measure of spread associated to the circular median use function `meandeviation`.

### Value

A scalar with the circular median value.

The median is returned as an object of class `circular`.

### Author(s)

Claudio Agostinelli and Alessandro Gagliardi

### References

N.I. Fisher (1993) Statistical Analysis of Circular Data, Cambridge University Press.

R.Y. Liu and K. Singh (1992) Ordering Directional Data: Concepts of Data Depth on Circles and Spheres, The Annals of Statistics, vol. 20, n. 3, 1468-1484.

### See Also

`meandeviation`, `mean.circular`, `var.circular`, `summary.circular`, `rho.circular` and `medianHL.circular`.

### Examples

    # Compute the median direction of a random sample of observations.
    x <- circular(runif(50, circular(0), pi))
    median(x) #only the median is returned
    meandeviation(x) #mean deviation is reported

[Package circular version 0.4-93 Index]