CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rexcelmatlabexcel-formula
Abhishek Bhatia
Abhishek Bhatia

Reputation: 9816

Calculating the magnitude of a column containing vectors

I have column which is used to store a physical vector quantity, say force or speed, in the following format:

[0 0]
[-0.011661058152260357 0.00372367132268286]

I wish to insert a new column which the magnitude of this vector. Calculation is simple: sqrt(x^2 + y^2), where x is the first number and y the second. The problem is how to read them and compute.

How can I achieved this in Excel or R or Matlab any way?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2570

Answers (2)

pnuts
pnuts

Reputation: 59485

In Excel: 

=SQRT(MID(A1,2,FIND(" ",A1)-1)^2+(MID(A1,FIND(" ",A1),FIND("]",A1)-FIND(" ",A1)-1)^2))

Upvotes: 2

Bryan Hanson
Bryan Hanson

Reputation: 6223

If these numbers were stored in a data frame in R, then you could simply put the magnitude in a new column:

df <- data.frame(x = rnorm(5), y = rnorm(5)) # fake data
df$mag <- sqrt(df$x^2 + df$y^2)

which gives:

           x          y       mag
1 -0.1027138  0.8126019 0.8190678
2  2.4021159 -0.1336111 2.4058289
3 -1.7490194  0.8151816 1.9296605
4  0.4898490  1.2700167 1.3612106
5 -1.6132449  2.2485643 2.7674176

Upvotes: 2

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