I have a set of GPS coordinates (x, y) along with heading information. The heading for these coordinates is more or less the same and the coordinates are within a few meters of each other. How can I use QGIS (or any other tool) to find the mean and standard deviation of these GPS coordinates along the heading, i.e. looking to rotate the X, Y plane along the heading direction and then find the mean and SD.
Thanks!
You can do this using Python (or Matlab, or R ...).
The following Python script takes a file name and an angle as arguments, and reads the data (assumes that each row contains one coordinate), rotates the coordinates, and calculates the mean and standard deviation of the rotated coordinates:
import numpy as np
import sys
filename = sys.argv[1]
angle = np.deg2rad(float(sys.argv[2]))
rotationMatrix = np.array([[np.cos(angle), np.sin(angle)],[-np.sin(angle),np.cos(angle)]])
coordinates = np.loadtxt(filename)
transformed = np.dot(coordinates, rotationMatrix)
print "Mean: " + str(np.mean(transformed,0))
print "Std dev: " + str(np.std(transformed,0))
