Faster numpy cartesian to spherical coordinate conversion?

Question

I have an array of 3 million data points from a 3-axiz accellerometer (XYZ), and I want to add 3 columns to the array containing the equivalent spherical coordinates (r, the

Answer 1

Here's a quick Cython code that I wrote up for this:

cdef extern from "math.h":
    long double sqrt(long double xx)
    long double atan2(long double a, double b)

import numpy as np
cimport numpy as np
cimport cython

ctypedef np.float64_t DTYPE_t

@cython.boundscheck(False)
@cython.wraparound(False)
def appendSpherical(np.ndarray[DTYPE_t,ndim=2] xyz):
    cdef np.ndarray[DTYPE_t,ndim=2] pts = np.empty((xyz.shape[0],6))
    cdef long double XsqPlusYsq
    for i in xrange(xyz.shape[0]):
        pts[i,0] = xyz[i,0]
        pts[i,1] = xyz[i,1]
        pts[i,2] = xyz[i,2]
        XsqPlusYsq = xyz[i,0]**2 + xyz[i,1]**2
        pts[i,3] = sqrt(XsqPlusYsq + xyz[i,2]**2)
        pts[i,4] = atan2(xyz[i,2],sqrt(XsqPlusYsq))
        pts[i,5] = atan2(xyz[i,1],xyz[i,0])
    return pts

It took the time down from 62.4 seconds to 1.22 seconds using 3,000,000 points for me. That's not too shabby. I'm sure there are some other improvements that can be made.