Reduce Number of Data Points (shrink_data_set)

Reduces the number of data points in a data set to a specified number.

See https://github.com/tamaskis/shrink_data_set-MATLAB or “DOCUMENTATION.pdf” for additional documentation and examples. Examples can also be found in “EXAMPLES.m”.

The "shrink_data_set" function reduces the number of data points in a data set, mainly for efficiency purposes. The function assumes the data set is compiled into a matrix. The organization of the data (i.e. if the variables are separated into rows or columns) can be specified.

This function is especially useful for plotting applications. For example, consider the case where you have a data set of 1000 points that exactly follows a quadratic relation. Plotting the full data set (with 1000 points) will not be visually superior to just plotting 100 uniformly distributed points extracted from the data set. However, plotting the full data set will be computationally much slower.