Angles between two n-dimensional vectors in Python

问题:

I need to determine the angle(s) between two n-dimensional vectors in Python. For example, the input can be two lists like the following: [1,2,3,4] and [6,7,8,9].

回答1:

import math

def dotproduct(v1, v2):
  return sum((a*b) for a, b in zip(v1, v2))

def length(v):
  return math.sqrt(dotproduct(v, v))

def angle(v1, v2):
  return math.acos(dotproduct(v1, v2) / (length(v1) * length(v2)))

Note: this will fail when the vectors have either the same or the opposite direction. The correct implementation is here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/13849249/71522

回答2:

Note: all of the other answers here will fail if the two vectors have either the same direction (ex, (1, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0)) or opposite directions (ex, (-1, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0)).

Here is a function which will correctly handle these cases:

import numpy as np

def unit_vector(vector):
    """ Returns the unit vector of the vector.  """
    return vector / np.linalg.norm(vector)

def angle_between(v1, v2):
    """ Returns the angle in radians between vectors 'v1' and 'v2'::

            >>> angle_between((1, 0, 0), (0, 1, 0))
            1.5707963267948966
            >>> angle_between((1, 0, 0), (1, 0, 0))
            0.0
            >>> angle_between((1, 0, 0), (-1, 0, 0))
            3.141592653589793
    """
    v1_u = unit_vector(v1)
    v2_u = unit_vector(v2)
    return np.arccos(np.clip(np.dot(v1_u, v2_u), -1.0, 1.0))

回答3:

Using numpy (highly recommended), you would do:

from numpy import (array, dot, arccos, clip)
from numpy.linalg import norm

u = array([1.,2,3,4])
v = ...
c = dot(u,v)/norm(u)/norm(v) # -> cosine of the angle
angle = arccos(clip(c, -1, 1)) # if you really want the angle

回答4:

The other possibility is using just numpy and it gives you the interior angle

import numpy as np

p0 = [3.5, 6.7]
p1 = [7.9, 8.4]
p2 = [10.8, 4.8]

''' 
compute angle (in degrees) for p0p1p2 corner
Inputs:
    p0,p1,p2 - points in the form of [x,y]
'''

v0 = np.array(p0) - np.array(p1)
v1 = np.array(p2) - np.array(p1)

angle = np.math.atan2(np.linalg.det([v0,v1]),np.dot(v0,v1))
print np.degrees(angle)

and here is the output:

In [2]: p0, p1, p2 = [3.5, 6.7], [7.9, 8.4], [10.8, 4.8]

In [3]: v0 = np.array(p0) - np.array(p1)

In [4]: v1 = np.array(p2) - np.array(p1)

In [5]: v0
Out[5]: array([-4.4, -1.7])

In [6]: v1
Out[6]: array([ 2.9, -3.6])

In [7]: angle = np.math.atan2(np.linalg.det([v0,v1]),np.dot(v0,v1))

In [8]: angle
Out[8]: 1.8802197318858924

In [9]: np.degrees(angle)
Out[9]: 107.72865519428085

回答5:

Using numpy and taking care of BandGap's rounding errors:

from numpy.linalg import norm
from numpy import dot
import math

def angle_between(a,b):
  arccosInput = dot(a,b)/norm(a)/norm(b)
  arccosInput = 1.0 if arccosInput > 1.0 else arccosInput
  arccosInput = -1.0 if arccosInput < -1.0 else arccosInput
  return math.acos(arccosInput)

Note, this function will throw an exception if one of the vectors has zero magnitude (divide by 0).