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Mathematical Equation Conversion

I'm attempting to write a method that determines the area of a polygon (complex or simple) on a sphere. I have a paper that was written by a few guys at the JPL that more or less give you the equations for these calculations.
The pdf file can be found here:
http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/handle/2014/40409
The equation can be found on page 7, under "The Spherical Case - Approximation":
I also typed the equation in Word:
Spherical_Case_Equation
I need assistance with converting this equation into the standard form (I think that's the right terminology). I've already done something similar for the Planer Case:
private double calcArea(Point2D[] shape) {
int n = shape.length;
double sum = 0.0;
if (n < 3) return 0.0;
for (int i = 0; i < n-1 ; i++) {
sum += (shape[i].getX() * shape[i+1].getY()) - (shape[i+1].getX() * shape[i].getY());
}
System.out.println(0.5 * Math.abs(sum));
return 0.5 * Math.abs(sum);
}
I just need help with doing something similar for the spherical case. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

I haven't read the paper you referenced. The area of a spherical polygon is proportional to the angle excess.
Area = r²(Σ Aᵢ - (n - 2)π)
To compute the corner angles, you may start with the 3D coordinates of your points. So at corner i you have vertex p[i] = (x[i],y[i],z[i]) and adjacent vertices p[i-1] and p[i+1] (resp p[(i+n-1)%n] and p[(i+1)%n] to get this cyclically correct). Then the cross products
v₁ = p[i] × p[i-1]
v₂ = p[i] × p[i+1]
will be orthogonal to the planes spanned by the incident edges and the origin which is the center of the sphere. Noe the angle between two vectors in space is given by
Aᵢ = arccos(⟨v₁,v₂⟩ / (‖v₁‖ * ‖v₂‖))
where ⟨v₁,v₂⟩ denotes the dot product between these two vectors which is proportional to the cosine of the angle, and ‖v₁‖ denotes the length of the first vector, likewise ‖v₂‖ for the second.

Bertrand's Paradox Simulation

So, I saw this on Hacker News the other day: http://web.mit.edu/tee/www/bertrand/problem.html
It basically says what's the probability that a random chord on a circle with radius of 1 has a length greater than the square root of 3.
Looking at it, it seems obvious that the answer is 1/3, but comments on HN have people who are smarter than me debating this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10000926
I didn't want to debate, but I did want to make sure I wasn't crazy. So I coded what I thought would prove it to be P = 1/3, but I end up getting P ~ .36. So, something's got to be wrong with my code.
Can I get a sanity check?
package com.jonas.betrand;
import java.awt.geom.Point2D;
import java.util.Random;
public class Paradox {
final static double ROOT_THREE = Math.sqrt(3);
public static void main(String[] args) {
int greater = 0;
int less = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
Point2D.Double a = getRandomPoint();
Point2D.Double b = getRandomPoint();
//pythagorean
if (Math.sqrt(Math.pow((a.x - b.x), 2) + Math.pow((a.y - b.y), 2)) > ROOT_THREE) {
greater++;
} else {
less++;
}
}
System.out.println("Probability Observerd: " + (double)greater/(greater+less));
}
public static Point2D.Double getRandomPoint() {
//get an x such that -1 < x < 1
double x = Math.random();
boolean xsign = new Random().nextBoolean();
if (!xsign) {
x *= -1;
}
//formula for a circle centered on origin with radius 1: x^2 + y^2 = 1
double y = Math.sqrt(1 - (Math.pow(x, 2)));
boolean ysign = new Random().nextBoolean();
if (!ysign) {
y *= -1;
}
Point2D.Double point = new Point2D.Double(x, y);
return point;
}
}
EDIT: Thanks to a bunch of people setting me straight, I found that my method of finding a random point wasn't indeed so random. Here is a fix for that function which returns about 1/3.
public static Point2D.Double getRandomPoint() {
//get an x such that -1 < x < 1
double x = Math.random();
Random r = new Random();
if (!r.nextBoolean()) {
x *= -1;
}
//circle centered on origin: x^2 + y^2 = r^2. r is 1.
double y = Math.sqrt(1 - (Math.pow(x, 2)));
if (!r.nextBoolean()) {
y *= -1;
}
if (r.nextBoolean()) {
return new Point2D.Double(x, y);
} else {
return new Point2D.Double(y, x);
}
}

I believe you need to assume one fixed point say at (0, 1) and then choose a random amount of rotation in [0, 2*pi] around the circle for the location of the second point of the chord.
Just for the hell of it I wrote your incorrect version in Swift (learn Swift!):
struct P {
let x, y: Double
init() {
x = (Double(arc4random()) / 0xFFFFFFFF) * 2 - 1
y = sqrt(1 - x * x) * (arc4random() % 2 == 0 ? 1 : -1)
}
func dist(other: P) -> Double {
return sqrt((x - other.x) * (x - other.x) + (y - other.y) * (y - other.y))
}
}
let root3 = sqrt(3.0)
let total = 100_000_000
var samples = 0
for var i = 0; i < total; i++ {
if P().dist(P()) > root3 {
samples++
}
}
println(Double(samples) / Double(total))
And the answer is indeed 0.36. As the comments have been explaining, a random X value is more likely to choose the "flattened area" around pi/2 and highly unlikely to choose the "vertically squeezed" area around 0 and pi.
It is easily fixed however in the constructor for P:
(Double(arc4random()) / 0xFFFFFFFF is fancy-speak for random floating point number in [0, 1))
let angle = Double(arc4random()) / 0xFFFFFFFF * M_PI * 2
x = cos(angle)
y = sin(angle)
// outputs 0.33334509

Bertrand's paradox is exactly that: a paradox. The answer can be argued to be 1/3 or 1/2 depending on how the problem is interpreted. It seems you took the random chord approach where one side of the line is fixed and then you draw a random chord to any part of the circle. Using this method, the chances of drawing a chord that is longer than sqrt(3) is indeed 1/3.
But if you use a different approach, I'll call it the random radius approach, you'll see that it can be 1/2! The random radius is this, you draw a radius in the circle, and then you take a random chord that this radius bisects. At this point, a random chord will be longer than sqrt(3) 1/2 of the time.
Lastly, the random midpoint method. Choose a random point in the circle, and then draw a chord with this random point as the midpoint of the chord. If this point falls within a concentric circle of radius 1/2, then the chord is shorter than sqrt(3). If it falls outside the concentric circle, it is longer than sqrt(3). A circle of radius 1/2 has 1/4 the area of a circle with radius 1, so the chance of a chord smaller than sqrt(3) is 1/4.
As for your code, I haven't had time to look at it yet, but hope this clarifies the paradox (which is just an incomplete question not actually a paradox) :D

I would argue that the Bertrand paradox is less a paradox and more a cautionary lesson in probability. It's really asking the question: What do you mean by random?
Bertrand argued that there are three natural but different methods for randomly choosing a chord, giving three distinct answers. But of course, there are other random methods, but these methods are arguably not the most natural ones (that is, not the first that come to mind). For example, we could randomly position the two chord endpoints in a non-uniform manner. Or we position the chord midpoint according to some non-uniform density, like a truncated bi-variate normal.
To simulate the three methods with a programming language, you need to be able to generate uniform random variables on the unit interval, which is what all standard (pseudo)-random number generators should do. For one of the methods/solutions (the random midpoint one), you then have to take the square root of one of the uniform random variables. You then multiple the random variables by a suitable factor (or rescale). Then for each simulation method (or solution), some geometry gives the expressions for the two endpoints.
For more details, I have written a post about this problem. I recommend the links and books I have cited at the end of that post, under the section Further reading. For example, see Section 1.3 in this new set of published lecture notes. The Bertrand paradox is also in The Pleasures of Probability by Isaac. It’s covered in a non-mathematical way in the book Paradoxes from A to Z by Clark.
I have also uploaded some simulation code in MATLAB, R and Python, which can be found here.
For example, in Python (with NumPy):
import numpy as np; #NumPy package for arrays, random number generation, etc
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt #for plotting
from matplotlib import collections as mc #for plotting line chords
###START Parameters START###
#Simulation disk dimensions
xx0=0; yy0=0; #center of disk
r=1; #disk radius
numbLines=10**2;#number of lines
###END Parameters END###
###START Simulate three solutions on a disk START###
#Solution A
thetaA1=2*np.pi*np.random.uniform(0,1,numbLines); #choose angular component uniformly
thetaA2=2*np.pi*np.random.uniform(0,1,numbLines); #choose angular component uniformly
#calculate chord endpoints
xxA1=xx0+r*np.cos(thetaA1);
yyA1=yy0+r*np.sin(thetaA1);
xxA2=xx0+r*np.cos(thetaA2);
yyA2=yy0+r*np.sin(thetaA2);
#calculate midpoints of chords
xxA0=(xxA1+xxA2)/2; yyA0=(yyA1+yyA2)/2;
#Solution B
thetaB=2*np.pi*np.random.uniform(0,1,numbLines); #choose angular component uniformly
pB=r*np.random.uniform(0,1,numbLines); #choose radial component uniformly
qB=np.sqrt(r**2-pB**2); #distance to circle edge (alonge line)
#calculate trig values
sin_thetaB=np.sin(thetaB);
cos_thetaB=np.cos(thetaB);
#calculate chord endpoints
xxB1=xx0+pB*cos_thetaB+qB*sin_thetaB;
yyB1=yy0+pB*sin_thetaB-qB*cos_thetaB;
xxB2=xx0+pB*cos_thetaB-qB*sin_thetaB;
yyB2=yy0+pB*sin_thetaB+qB*cos_thetaB;
#calculate midpoints of chords
xxB0=(xxB1+xxB2)/2; yyB0=(yyB1+yyB2)/2;
#Solution C
#choose a point uniformly in the disk
thetaC=2*np.pi*np.random.uniform(0,1,numbLines); #choose angular component uniformly
pC=r*np.sqrt(np.random.uniform(0,1,numbLines)); #choose radial component
qC=np.sqrt(r**2-pC**2); #distance to circle edge (alonge line)
#calculate trig values
sin_thetaC=np.sin(thetaC);
cos_thetaC=np.cos(thetaC);
#calculate chord endpoints
xxC1=xx0+pC*cos_thetaC+qC*sin_thetaC;
yyC1=yy0+pC*sin_thetaC-qC*cos_thetaC;
xxC2=xx0+pC*cos_thetaC-qC*sin_thetaC;
yyC2=yy0+pC*sin_thetaC+qC*cos_thetaC;
#calculate midpoints of chords
xxC0=(xxC1+xxC2)/2; yyC0=(yyC1+yyC2)/2;
###END Simulate three solutions on a disk END###

Wireframe sphere with latitude/longitude OpenGL

I'm trying to create a wireframe sphere using openGL that has latitude and longitude lines. Currently I'm running into an issue that I think I'm simply overlooking and with a bit of help can quickly correct with creating the sphere. My code is the following inside of a class that creates displays:
double rho = 1;
gl.glBegin(GL2.GL_LINE_LOOP);
for (int i = 0; i< 360; i++){
theta = i/180 * Math.PI;
for (int j = 0; j< 360; j++){
double phi = j/180 * Math.PI;
double x = rho * Math.sin(phi) * Math.cos(theta);
double y = rho * Math.sin(phi) * Math.sin(theta);
double z = rho * Math.sin(phi);
gl.glVertex3d(x, y, z);
}
gl.glEnd();
}
From this code I'm currently not getting anything to display. What am I missing?

There are number of problems in this code:
As already pointed out in the comments, the glBegin() and glEnd() are unbalanced. The glBegin() needs to be inside the first loop.
The second angle should only loop from 0 to 180, not 360. This is based on the definition of spherical coordinates.
In the divisions i/180 and j/180, both values are of type int, therefore the operation is an integer division. With the values used, the result of those divisions will always be 0 or 1.
The calculation of the z-coordinate needs to use cos(phi) instead of sin(phi).
Not wrong, but just recommendations:
There's no need to use double precision values. OpenGL will use single precision anyway.
As mentioned in the comments, the code is using legacy features that are deprecated and deleted in modern versions of OpenGL.
Sticking with the immediate mode drawing, fixing these problems should result in working (untested) code:
float radius = 1.0f;
for (int i = 0; i <= 360; i++) {
gl.glBegin(GL2.GL_LINE_LOOP);
float theta = i * (Math.PI / 180.0f);
for (int j = 0; j <= 180; j++) {
float phi = j * (Math.PI / 180.0f);
float x = radius * Math.sin(phi) * Math.cos(theta);
float y = radius * Math.sin(phi) * Math.sin(theta);
float z = radius * Math.cos(phi);
gl.glVertex3f(x, y, z);
}
gl.glEnd();
}
This will give you the longitude lines. The code for the latitude lines will be very similar, with the two loops swapped.
As for the discussion about deprecated/legacy features, this is somewhat broad to be covered here. So just a very quick summary:
What you're using here is typically called "immediate mode drawing". This is the way OpenGL worked in the original version. More efficient ways of specifying vertex data were introduced around 20 years ago. Initially is was Vertex Arrays, then Vertex Buffer Objects (VBO). Vertex Array Objects (VAO) were introduced later to make the state setup more efficient.
With OpenGL 3.2, which was introduced in 2009, two "profiles" were defined:
Core Profile: Deletes the deprecated legacy features, including immediate mode drawing.
Compatibility Profile: Still supports all features to maintain backwards compatibility.
If you write new code, particularly if you just start learning, there's no good reason to learn legacy features. The initial threshold is slightly higher when using the Core Profile (mainly because it requires you to write your own shaders in GLSL), but it's well worth it. Current versions of OpenGL ES are also much closer to the Core Profile, and do not have any of these legacy featues.

dot product of two quaternion rotations

I understand that the dot (or inner) product of two quaternions is the angle between the rotations (including the axis-rotation). This makes the dot product equal to the angle between two points on the quaternion hypersphere.
I can not, however, find how to actually compute the dot product.
Any help would be appreciated!
current code:
public static float dot(Quaternion left, Quaternion right){
float angle;
//compute
return angle;
}
Defined are Quaternion.w, Quaternion.x, Quaternion.y, and Quaternion.z.
Note: It can be assumed that the quaternions are normalised.

The dot product for quaternions is simply the standard Euclidean dot product in 4D:
dot = left.x * right.x + left.y * right.y + left.z * right.z + left.w * right.w
Then the angle your are looking for is the arccos of the dot product (note that the dot product is not the angle): acos(dot).
However, if you are looking for the relative rotation between two quaternions, say from q1 to q2, you should compute the relative quaternion q = q1^-1 * q2 and then find the rotation associated withq.

Just NOTE: acos(dot) is very not stable from numerical point of view.
as was said previos, q = q1^-1 * q2 and than angle = 2*atan2(q.vec.length(), q.w)

Should it be 2 x acos(dot) to get the angle between quaternions.

The "right way" to compute the angle between two quaternions
There is really no such thing as the angle between two quaternions, there is only the quaternion that takes one quaternion to another via multiplication. However, you can measure the total angle of rotation of that mapping transformation, by computing the difference between the two quaternions (e.g. qDiff = q1.mul(q2.inverse()), or your library might be able to compute this directly using a call like qDiff = q1.difference(q2)), and then measuring the angle about the axis of the quaternion (your quaternion library probably has a routine for this, e.g. ang = qDiff.angle()).
Note that you will probably need to fix the value, since measuring the angle about an axis doesn't necessarily give the rotation "the short way around", e.g.:
if (ang > Math.PI) {
ang -= 2.0 * Math.PI;
} else if (ang < -Math.PI) {
ang += 2.0 * Math.PI;
}
Measuring the similarity of two quaternions using the dot product
Update: See this answer instead.
I assume that in the original question, the intent of treating the quaternions as 4d vectors is to enable a simple method for measuring the similarity of two quaternions, while still keeping in mind that the quaternions represent rotations. (The actual rotation mapping from one quaternion to another is itself a quaternion, not a scalar.)
Several answers suggest using the acos of the dot product. (First thing to note: the quaternions must be unit quaternions for this to work.) However, the other answers don't take into account the "double cover issue": both q and -q represent the exact same rotation.
Both acos(q1 . q2) and acos(q1 . (-q2)) should return the same value, since q2 and -q2 represent the same rotation. However (with the exception of x == 0), acos(x) and acos(-x) do not return the same value. Therefore, on average (given random quaternions), acos(q1 . q2) will not give you what you expect half of the time, meaning that it will not give you a measure of the angle between q1 and q2, assuming that you care at all that q1 and q2 represent rotations. So even if you only plan to use the dot product or acos of the dot product as a similarity metric, to test how similar q1 and q2 are in terms of the effect they have as a rotation, the answer you get will be wrong half the time.
More specifically, if you are trying to simply treat quaternions as 4d vectors, and you compute ang = acos(q1 . q2), you will sometimes get the value of ang that you expect, and the rest of the time the value you actually wanted (taking into account the double cover issue) will be PI - acos(-q1 . q2). Which of these two values you get will randomly fluctuate between these values depending on exactly how q1 and q2 were computed!.
To solve this problem, you have to normalize the quaternions so that they are in the same "hemisphere" of the double cover space. There are several ways to do this, and to be honest I'm not even sure which of these is the "right" or optimal way. They do all produce different results from other methods in some cases. Any feedback on which of the three normalization forms above is the correct or optimal one would be greatly appreciated.
import java.util.Random;
import org.joml.Quaterniond;
import org.joml.Vector3d;
public class TestQuatNorm {
private static Random random = new Random(1);
private static Quaterniond randomQuaternion() {
return new Quaterniond(
random.nextDouble() * 2 - 1, random.nextDouble() * 2 - 1,
random.nextDouble() * 2 - 1, random.nextDouble() * 2 - 1)
.normalize();
}
public static double normalizedDot0(Quaterniond q1, Quaterniond q2) {
return Math.abs(q1.dot(q2));
}
public static double normalizedDot1(Quaterniond q1, Quaterniond q2) {
return
(q1.w >= 0.0 ? q1 : new Quaterniond(-q1.x, -q1.y, -q1.z, -q1.w))
.dot(
q2.w >= 0.0 ? q2 : new Quaterniond(-q2.x, -q2.y, -q2.z, -q2.w));
}
public static double normalizedDot2(Quaterniond q1, Quaterniond q2) {
Vector3d v1 = new Vector3d(q1.x, q1.y, q1.z);
Vector3d v2 = new Vector3d(q2.x, q2.y, q2.z);
double dot = v1.dot(v2);
Quaterniond q2n = dot >= 0.0 ? q2
: new Quaterniond(-q2.x, -q2.y, -q2.z, -q2.w);
return q1.dot(q2n);
}
public static double acos(double val) {
return Math.toDegrees(Math.acos(Math.max(-1.0, Math.min(1.0, val))));
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
var q1 = randomQuaternion();
var q2 = randomQuaternion();
double dot = q1.dot(q2);
double dot0 = normalizedDot0(q1, q2);
double dot1 = normalizedDot1(q1, q2);
double dot2 = normalizedDot2(q1, q2);
System.out.println(acos(dot) + "\t" + acos(dot0) + "\t" + acos(dot1)
+ "\t" + acos(dot2));
}
}
}
Also note that:
acos is known to not be very numerically accurate (given some worst-case inputs, up to half of the least significant digits can be wrong);
the implementation of acos is exceptionally slow in the JDK standard libraries;
acos returns NaN if its parameter is even slightly outside [-1,1], which is a common occurrence for dot products of even unit quaternions -- so you need to bound the value of the dot product to that range before calling acos. See this line in the code above:
return Math.toDegrees(Math.acos(Math.max(-1.0, Math.min(1.0, val))));
According to this cheatsheet Eq. (42), there is a more robust and accurate way of computing the angle between two vectors that replaces acos with atan2 (although note that this does not solve the double cover problem either, so you will need to use one of the above normalization forms before applying the following):
ang(q1, q2) = 2 * atan2(|q1 - q2|, |q1 + q2|)
I admit though that I don't understand this formulation, since quaternion subtraction and addition has no geometrical meaning.

Math.atan() returning input

I'm having a problem with Math.atan returning the same value as the input.
public double inchToMOA( double in, double range){
double rangeIn = 36*range;
double atan = (in / rangeIn) * -1.0;
double deg = Math.atan(atan);
double moa = deg * 60;
return moa;
}
I had this all in one line, but I broke it down into different variables to see if I could find out why it wasn't working. if in = -10 and range = 300, then atan is about -.00094. The angle should be about -.053 degrees, but math.atan is returning -.00094, the same as the input.
Is my number too small for math.atan?

Inverse tangent is described here:
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/InverseTangent.html
I don't think your argument is the problem here.
You realize, of course, that computer trig functions deal in radians rather than degrees, right?

It might just be. If you look at the strict definition of the tangent function in mathematics what you see if that tan(x) = sin(x)/cos(x) for small values of "x"
lim x->0, sin(x) = x
lim x->0, cos(x) = 1
hence, you could see that lim x->0, tan(x) -> x meaning that it's inverse, arctan, returns the value it is given. As to the numerical accuracy of Math.atan I would think that the authors had gone to great lengths to ensure it's numerical accuracy.

There's nothing wrong with Math.atan. Its value is nearly 1:1 linear, intersecting the origin, for inputs close to zero. So the closer you are to zero the less change from the input there will be.