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

To complete the previous answers, here is a Numexpr implementation (with a possible fallback to Numpy),

import numpy as np
from numpy import arctan2, sqrt
import numexpr as ne

def cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=ne.evaluate):
    """ x, y, z :  ndarray coordinates
        ceval: backend to use: 
              - eval :  pure Numpy
              - numexpr.evaluate:  Numexpr """
    azimuth = ceval('arctan2(y,x)')
    xy2 = ceval('x**2 + y**2')
    elevation = ceval('arctan2(z, sqrt(xy2))')
    r = eval('sqrt(xy2 + z**2)')
    return azimuth, elevation, r

For large array sizes, this allows a factor of 2 speed up compared to pure a Numpy implementation, and would be comparable to C or Cython speeds. The present numpy solution (when used with the ceval=eval argument) is also 25% faster than the appendSpherical_np function in the @mtrw answer for large array sizes,

In [1]: xyz = np.random.rand(3000000,3)
   ...: x,y,z = xyz.T
In [2]: %timeit -n 1 appendSpherical_np(xyz)
1 loops, best of 3: 397 ms per loop
In [3]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=eval)
1 loops, best of 3: 280 ms per loop
In [4]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=ne.evaluate)
1 loops, best of 3: 145 ms per loop

although for smaller sizes, appendSpherical_np is actually faster,

In [5]: xyz = np.random.rand(3000,3)
...: x,y,z = xyz.T
In [6]: %timeit -n 1 appendSpherical_np(xyz)
1 loops, best of 3: 206 µs per loop
In [7]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=eval)
1 loops, best of 3: 261 µs per loop
In [8]: %timeit -n 1 cart2sph(x,y,z, ceval=ne.evaluate)
1 loops, best of 3: 271 µs per loop