Interpolate or find a point in a point array fast?

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Hi,

I'm still new to vb.net and have come up against another problem that should be easy to solve but after much time I still can't workout how to do it right.

I have a large 1d array of points which have unique Y's and varying X's and I want to linearly interpolate an X when provided with a Y.

I have got it working by finding the nearest point via an iterating counter through the array. Unfortunately it is too slow. I did see that .NET has the array.find with predicate but I couldn't see a sensible way of passing the known Y to the predicate?

Any suggestions gratefully received !

Thanks.

Posted 24-Mar-12 9:12am

codetowns

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 24-Mar-12 18:35pm

You did not property describe your data. Is it sorted by X or not? (Or by Y.) Are X points placed uniformly (this is not redundant question, it's often the case in many cases of data acquisition)? What's the problem with predicate? What array function did you try?
--SA

codetowns 25-Mar-12 6:34am

Apologies and thanks for the reply.

It is sorted low to high in Y but is not uniform. X has a range of around + 50 to - 50. So it is something like:

15,1
25,3
-15,5
-17,6
5,9
10,21
etc.

I tried the array.find but it appeared to me that the predicate function only took a point (and not the required Y without a public variable), and also would fail on a missing Y. It sounds stupid I know but I guess this is my problem of being self taught! Perhaps there is a suitable array method?

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CPallini · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-25T23:30:00

Solution 2

Since your array is sorted you may implement a binary search[^].

Posted 25-Mar-12 23:30pm

CPallini

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codetowns 26-Mar-12 8:42am

Yes, many thanks for that link!

I've now got it searching in halves until it finds a point. Failing that it knows the two nearest ones for interpolation.

CPallini 26-Mar-12 8:48am

You are welcome.
:-)

MarqW · Accepted Answer · 2012-03-25T23:19:00

Solution 1

If you use a List(Of Point) instead of an array, you can use

VB

Points.Where(Function(p) p.Y = 34).First.X

Alternatively, if your Y is not excepted to be in the array, look up how to calculate the equation of a line ( y = mx + c ) and use this against a couple of points from your array, then you can use this to calculate an X for any value of Y

Posted 25-Mar-12 23:19pm

MarqW

Updated 25-Mar-12 23:22pm

v2

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codetowns 26-Mar-12 8:40am

I was unaware of that 'points.where' function - interesting. As the straight line method was needed anyway (as you said y = mx + c)I decided to do the binary search method in the end. Thanks for the reply!