Spherical S²

Directional clustering, angular uniformity
distributionaldim 24 metrics

What It Measures

Whether the signal's values cluster around a preferred direction.

Maps each pair of consecutive values to a point on the 2-sphere via spherical coordinates: the first value becomes the polar angle (north-south), the second becomes the azimuthal angle (around the equator). The resulting point cloud on the sphere reveals directional bias that a histogram would miss — two signals with identical value distributions can have completely different spherical profiles if their consecutive-pair correlations differ.

Metrics

angular_spread

Standard deviation of the angles between each point and the cloud's mean direction. Thue-Morse, L-System Dragon, and Rule 30 all score 1.57 (maximum spread — points uniformly scattered, no preferred direction). Constants score 0.0 (all points at one pole). This is the spherical analogue of standard deviation.

concentration

Resultant length of the mean direction vector: how tightly do the points cluster? 1.0 means all points at the same location (Logistic period-2, Collatz gap lengths, Rainfall). Near 0.0 means perfectly diffuse (Thue-Morse at 0.0001). A signal can have high entropy in the Torus geometry but high concentration on the sphere if its consecutive pairs always point in the same angular direction.

hemisphere_balance

How evenly are points split between the northern and southern hemispheres? 1.0 means perfect 50/50 (Thue-Morse, L-System Dragon, Clipped Sine). 0.0 means all points on one side (constants, logistic period-2). This detects asymmetry in the polar angle distribution — signals that spend more time in one "half" of their range.

mean_z

Average z-coordinate on the sphere (cosine of polar angle). Positive means points cluster toward the north pole (low first-of-pair values, since small values map to theta near 0 where cos(theta) = 1). Collatz gap lengths (1.0) and Rainfall (1.0) are maximally northern: their values are dominated by small numbers, which map to the north pole. Forest fire (-0.96) is maximally southern: its large avalanche values map to the south. This metric encodes distributional skewness through geometry.

Atlas Rankings

angular_spread
SourceDomainValue
Thue-Morseexotic1.5708
L-System (Dragon Curve)exotic1.5708
Rule 30exotic1.5708
···
Constant 0xFFnoise0.0000
Constant 0x00noise0.0000
Logistic r=3.2 (Period-2)chaos0.0000
concentration
SourceDomainValue
Logistic r=3.2 (Period-2)chaos1.0000
Collatz Gap Lengthsnumber_theory0.9999
Rainfall (ORD Hourly)climate0.9987
···
Constant 0xFFnoise0.0000
Constant 0x00noise0.0000
Thue-Morseexotic0.0001
hemisphere_balance
SourceDomainValue
Thue-Morseexotic0.9999
L-System (Dragon Curve)exotic0.9999
Clipped Sinewaveform0.9979
···
Constant 0xFFnoise0.0000
Constant 0x00noise0.0000
Logistic r=3.2 (Period-2)chaos0.0000
mean_z
SourceDomainValue
Collatz Gap Lengthsnumber_theory0.9996
Rainfall (ORD Hourly)climate0.9987
Geomagnetic ap Indexgeophysics0.9798
···
Forest Fireexotic-0.9638
Stern-Brocot Walknumber_theory-0.7557
Logistic Edge-of-Chaoschaos-0.4606

When It Lights Up

Spherical geometry separates sources by their directional structure in a way that scalar statistics cannot. Two signals with the same mean and variance can have opposite mean_z values if one is right-skewed and the other is left-skewed. In the atlas, the concentration axis separates noise-like sources (diffuse, concentration near 0) from spike-dominated sources (concentrated, Collatz gaps and rainfall near 1.0). The hemisphere_balance axis is orthogonal to this, catching symmetry vs. asymmetry regardless of concentration.

Open in Atlas
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