Polar rose plot

A polar rose plot (or roseplot) is an angle histogram showing the distribution of values grouped according to their numeric range (viewed as a "polar plot"). It is similar to a polar rose (i.e. with r = cos(k*θ)) but not necessarily symmetric, as the symmetry (or "direction" of petals) is entirely dependant on the input data.

A roseplot is useful for viewing the "direction" of input data. It is commonly used for plotting the daily (or yearly, etc.) average wind direction at a given location (sometimes called a "wind direction plot" or a "wind rose").

I routinely use roseplots in my bioinformatics research. They are especially useful for getting an overview of amino acid- or nucleotide-usage in a given genome or sequence (note: to see what I mean, have a look at the Genome Atlas Server at CBS).

External links

• Mathworld article on rose curves
• Applet to create rose with k parameter
• MATLAB Function Reference - rose
• Wind rose — include a Python script and examples.
• Wind Rose Plotter Programme
• wikipedia:Polar coordinate system
• wikipedia:List of canonical coordinate transformations

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