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Currently, I'm writing a simulation that asses the performance of a positioning algorithm by measuring the mean error of the position estimator for different points around the room. Unfortunately the running times are pretty slow and so I am looking for ways to speed up my code.
The working principle of the position estimator is based on the MUSIC algorithm. The estimator gets an autocorrelation matrix (sized 12x12, with complex values in general) as an input and follows the next steps:
Find the 12 eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the autocorrelation matrix R.
Construct a new 12x11 matrix EN whose columns are the 11 eigenvectors corresponding to the 11 smallest eigenvalues.
Using the matrix EN, construct a function P = 1/(a' EN EN' a).
Where a is a 12x1 complex vector and a' is the Hermitian conjugate of a. The components of a are functions of 3 variables (named x,y and z) and so the scalar P is also a function P(x,y,z)
Finally, find the values (x0,y0,z0) which maximizes the value of P and return it as the position estimate.
In my code, I choose some constant z and create a grid on points in the plane (at heigh z, parallel to the xy plane). For each point I make n4Avg repetitions and calculate the error of the estimated point. At the end of the parfor loop (and some reshaping), I have a matrix of errors with dims (nx) x (ny) x (n4Avg) and the mean error is calculated by taking the mean of the error matrix (acting on the 3rd dimension).
nx=30 is the number of point along the x axis.
ny=15 is the number of points along the y axis.
n4Avg=100 is the number of repetitions used for calculating the mean error at each point.
nGen=100 is the number of generations in the GA algorithm (100 was tested to be good enough).
x = linspace(-20,20,nx);
y = linspace(0,20,ny);
z = 5;
[X,Y] = meshgrid(x,y);
parfor ri = 1:nx*ny
rT = [X(ri);Y(ri);z];
[ENs] = getEnNs(rT,stdv,n4R,n4Avg); % create n4Avg EN matrices
for rep = 1:n4Avg
pos_est = estPos_helper(squeeze(ENs(:,:,rep)),nGen);
posEstErr(ri,rep) = vecnorm(pos_est(:)-rT(:));
end
end
The matrices EN are generated by the following code
function [ENs] = getEnNs(rT,stdv,n4R,nEN)
% generate nEN simulated EN matrices, each using n4R simulated phases
f_c = 2402e6; % center frequency [Hz]
c0 = 299702547; % speed of light [m/s]
load antennaeArr1.mat antennaeArr1;
% generate initial phases.
phi0 = 2*pi*rand(n4R*nEN,1);
k0 = 2*pi.*(f_c)./c0;
I = cos(-k0.*vecnorm(antennaeArr1 - rT(:),2,1)-phi0);
Q = -sin(-k0.*vecnorm(antennaeArr1 - rT(:),2,1)-phi0);
phases = I+1i*Q;
phases = phases + stdv/sqrt(2)*(randn(size(phases)) + 1i*randn(size(phases)));
phases = reshape(phases',[12,n4R,nEN]);
Rxx = pagemtimes(phases,pagectranspose(phases));
ENs = zeros(12,11,nEN);
for i=1:nEN
[ENs(:,:,i),~] = eigs(squeeze(Rxx(:,:,i)),11,'smallestabs');
end
end
The position estimator uses a solver utilizing a 'genetic algorithm' (chosen because it preformed the best of all the other solvers).
function pos_est = estPos_helper(EN,nGen)
load antennaeArr1.mat antennaeArr1; % 3x12 constant matrix
antennae_array = antennaeArr1;
x0 = [0;10;5];
lb = [-20;0;0];
ub = [20;20;10];
function y = myfun(x)
k0 = 2*pi*2.402e9/299702547;
a = exp( -1i*k0*sqrt( (x(1)-antennae_array(1,:)').^2 + (x(2) - antennae_array(2,:)').^2 + (x(3)-antennae_array(3,:)').^2 ) );
y = 1/real((a')*(EN)*(EN')*a);
end
% Create optimization variables
x3 = optimvar("x",3,1,"LowerBound",lb,"UpperBound",ub);
% Set initial starting point for the solver
initialPoint2.x = x0;
% Create problem
problem = optimproblem("ObjectiveSense","Maximize");
% Define problem objective
problem.Objective = fcn2optimexpr(#myfun,x3);
% Set nondefault solver options
options2 = optimoptions("ga","Display","off","HybridFcn","fmincon",...
"MaxGenerations",nGen);
% Solve problem
solution = solve(problem,initialPoint2,"Solver","ga","Options",options2);
% Clear variables
clearvars x3 initialPoint2 options2
pos_est = solution.x;
end
The current runtime of the code, when setting the parameters as shown above, is around 700-800 seconds. This is a problem as I would like to increase the number of points in the grid and the number of repetitions to get a more accurate result.
The main ways I've tried to tackle this is by using parallel computing (in the form of the parloop) and by reducing the nested loops I had (one for x and one for y) into a single vectorized loop going over all the points in the grid.
It indeed helped, but not quite enough.
I apologize for the messy code.
Michael.
I have a question related to Fast Fourier transform. I want to calculate the phase and make FFT to draw power spectral density. However when I calculate the frequency f, there are some errors. This is my program code:
n = 1:32768;
T = 0.2*10^-9; % Sampling period
Fs = 1/T; % Sampling frequency
Fn = Fs/2; % Nyquist frequency
omega = 2*pi*200*10^6; % Carrier frequency
L = 32768; % % Length of signal
t = (0:L-1)*T; % Time vector
x_signal(n) = cos(omega*T*n + 0.1*randn(size(n))); % Additive phase noise (random)
y_signal(n) = sin(omega*T*n + 0.1*randn(size(n))); % Additive phase noise (random)
theta(n) = atan(y_signal(n)/x_signal(n));
f = (theta(n)-theta(n-1))/(2*pi)
Y = fft(f,t);
PSD = Y.*conj(Y); % Power Spectral Density
%Fv = linspace(0, 1, fix(L/2)+1)*Fn; % Frequency Vector
As posted, you would get the error
error: subscript indices must be either positive integers less than 2^31 or logicals
which refers to the operation theta(n-1) when n=1 which results in an index of 0 (which is out of bounds since Matlab uses 1-based indexing). To avoid that could use a subset of indices in n:
f = (theta(n(2:end))-theta(n(1:end-1)))/(2*pi);
That said, if you are doing this to try to obtain an instantaneous measure of the frequency, then you will have a few more issues to deal with. The most trivial one is that you should also divide by T. Not as obvious is the fact that as given, theta is a scalar due to the use of the / operator (see Matlab's mrdivide) rather than the ./ operator which performs element-wise division. So a better expression would be:
theta(n) = atan(y_signal(n)./x_signal(n));
Now, the next problem you might notice is that you are actually losing some phase information since the result of atan is [-pi/2,pi/2] instead of the full [-pi,pi] range. To avoid this you should instead be using atan2:
theta(n) = atan2(y_signal(n), x_signal(n));
Even with this, you are likely to notice that the estimated frequency regularly has spikes whenever the phase jumps between near -pi and near pi. This can be avoided by computing the phase difference modulo 2*pi:
f = mod(theta(n(2:end))-theta(n(1:end-1)),2*pi)/(2*pi*T);
A final thing to note: when calling the fft, you should not be passing in a time variable (the input is implicitly assumed to be sampled at regular time intervals). You may however specify the desired length of the FFT. So, you would thus compute Y as follow:
Y = fft(f, L);
And you could then plot the resulting PSD using:
Fv = linspace(0, 1, fix(L/2)+1)*Fn; % Frequency Vector
plot(Fv, abs(PSD(1:L/2+1)));
I'm currently trying to optimize some MATLAB/Octave code by means of an algorithmic change, but can't figure out how to deal with some randomness here. Suppose that I have a vector V of integers, with each element representing a count of some things, photons in my case. Now I want to randomly pick some amount of those "things" and create a new vector of the same size, but with the counts adjusted.
Here's how I do this at the moment:
function W = photonfilter(V, eff)
% W = photonfilter(V, eff)
% Randomly takes photons from V according to the given efficiency.
%
% Args:
% V: Input vector containing the number of emitted photons in each
% timeslot (one element is one timeslot). The elements are rounded
% to integers before processing.
% eff: Filter efficiency. On the average, every 1/eff photon will be
% taken. This value must be in the range 0 < eff <= 1.
% W: Output row vector with the same length as V and containing the number
% of received photons in each timeslot.
%
% WARNING: This function operates on a photon-by-photon basis in that it
% constructs a vector with one element per photon. The storage requirements
% therefore directly depend on sum(V), not only on the length of V.
% Round V and make it flat.
Ntot = length(V);
V = round(V);
V = V(:);
% Initialize the photon-based vector, so that each element contains
% the original index of the photon.
idxV = zeros(1, sum(V), 'uint32');
iout = 1;
for i = 1:Ntot
N = V(i);
idxV(iout:iout+N-1) = i;
iout = iout + N;
end;
% Take random photons.
idxV = idxV(randperm(length(idxV)));
idxV = idxV(1:round(length(idxV)*eff));
% Generate the output vector by placing the remaining photons back
% into their timeslots.
[W, trash] = hist(idxV, 1:Ntot);
This is a rather straightforward implementation of the description above. But it has an obvious performance drawback: The function creates a vector (idxV) containing one element per single photon. So if my V has only 1000 elements but an average count of 10000 per element, the internal vector will have 10 million elements making the function slow and heavy.
What I'd like to achieve now is not to directly optimize this code, but to use some other kind of algorithm which immediately calculates the new counts without giving each photon some kind of "identity". This must be possible somehow, but I just can't figure out how to do it.
Requirements:
The output vector W must have the same number of elements as the input vector V.
W(i) must be an integer and bounded by 0 <= W(i) <= V(i).
The expected value of sum(W) must be sum(V)*eff.
The algorithm must somehow implement this "random picking" of photons, i.e. there should not be some deterministic part like "run through V dividing all counts by the stepsize and propagating the remainders", as the whole point of this function is to bring randomness into the system.
An explicit loop over V is allowed if unavoidable, but a vectorized approach is preferable.
Any ideas how to implement something like this? A solution using only a random vector and then some trickery with probabilities and rounding would be ideal, but I haven't had any success with that so far.
Thanks! Best regards, Philipp
The method you employ to compute W is called Monte Carlo method. And indeed there can be some optimizations. Once of such is instead of calculating indices of photons, let's imagine a set of bins. Each bin has some probability and the sum of all bins' probabilities adds up to 1. We divide the segment [0, 1] into parts whose lengths are proportional to the probabilities of the bins. Now for every random number within [0, 1) that we generate we can quickly find the bin that it belongs to. Finally, we count numbers in the bins to obtain the final result. The code below illustrates the idea.
% Population size (number of photons).
N = 1000000;
% Sample size, size of V and W as well.
% For convenience of plotting, V and W are of the same size, but
% the algorithm doesn't enforce this constraint.
M = 10000;
% Number of Monte Carlo iterations, greater numbers give better quality.
K = 100000;
% Generate population of counts, use gaussian distribution to test the method.
% If implemented correctly histograms should have the same shape eventually.
V = hist(randn(1, N), M);
P = cumsum(V / sum(V));
% For every generated random value find its bin and then count the bins.
% Finally we normalize counts by the ration of N / K.
W = hist(lookup(P, rand(1, K)), M) * N / K;
% Compare distribution plots, they should be the same.
hold on;
plot(W, '+r');
plot(V, '*b');
pause
Based on the answer from Alexander Solovets, this is how the code now looks:
function W = photonfilter(V, eff, impl=1)
Ntot = length(V);
V = V(:);
if impl == 0
% Original "straightforward" solution.
V = round(V);
idxV = zeros(1, sum(V), 'uint32');
iout = 1;
for i = 1:Ntot
N = V(i);
idxV(iout:iout+N-1) = i;
iout = iout + N;
end;
idxV = idxV(randperm(length(idxV)));
idxV = idxV(1:round(length(idxV)*eff));
[W, trash] = hist(idxV, 1:Ntot);
else
% Monte Carlo approach.
Nphot = sum(V);
P = cumsum(V / Nphot);
W = hist(lookup(P, rand(1, round(Nphot * eff))), 0:Ntot-1);
end;
The results are quite comparable, as long as eff if not too close to 1 (with eff=1, the original solution yields W=V while the Monte Carlo approach still has some randomness, thereby violating the upper bound constraints).
Test in the interactive Octave shell:
octave:1> T=linspace(0,10*pi,10000);
octave:2> V=100*(1+sin(T));
octave:3> W1=photonfilter(V, 0.1, 0);
octave:4> W2=photonfilter(V, 0.1, 1);
octave:5> plot(T,V,T,W1,T,W2);
octave:6> legend('V','Random picking','Monte Carlo')
octave:7> sum(W1)
ans = 100000
octave:8> sum(W2)
ans = 100000
Plot:
I had always heard that vectorized code runs faster than for loops in MATLAB. However, when I tried vectorizing my MATLAB code it seemed to run slower.
I used tic and toc to measure the times. I changed only the implementation of a single function in my program. My vectorized version ran in 47.228801 seconds and my for-loop version ran in 16.962089 seconds.
Also in my main program I used a large number for N, N = 1000000and DataSet's size is 1 301, and I ran each version several times for different data sets with the same size and N.
Why is the vectorized so much slower and how can I improve the speed further?
The "vectorized" version
function [RNGSet] = RNGAnal(N,DataSet)
%Creates a random number generated set of numbers to check accuracy overall
% This function will produce random numbers and normalize a new Data set
% that is derived from an old data set by multiply random numbers and
% then dividing by N/2
randData = randint(N,length(DataSet));
tempData = repmat(DataSet,N,1);
RNGSet = randData .* tempData;
RNGSet = sum(RNGSet,1) / (N/2); % sum and normalize by the N
end
The "for-loop" version
function [RNGData] = RNGAnsys(N,Data)
%RNGAnsys This function produces statistical RNG data using a for loop
% This function will produce RNGData that will be used to plot on another
% plot that possesses the actual data
multData = zeros(N,length(Data));
for i = 1:length(Data)
photAbs = randint(N,1); % Create N number of random 0's or 1's
multData(:,i) = Data(i) * photAbs; % multiply each element in the molar data by the random numbers
end
sumData = sum(multData,1); % sum each individual energy level's data point
RNGData = (sumData/(N/2))'; % divide by n, but account for 0.5 average by n/2
end
Vectorization
First glance at the for-loop code tells us that since photAbs is a binary array each column of which is scaled according to each element of Data, this binary feature could be used for vectorization. This is abused in the code here -
function RNGData = RNGAnsys_vect1(N,Data)
%// Get the 2D Matrix of random ones and zeros
photAbsAll = randint(N,numel(Data));
%// Take care of multData internally by summing along the columns of the
%// binary 2D matrix and then multiply each element of it with each scalar
%// taken from Data by performing elementwise multiplication
sumData = Data.*sum(photAbsAll,1);
%// Divide by n, but account for 0.5 average by n/2
RNGData = (sumData./(N/2))'; %//'
return;
After profiling, it appears that the bottleneck is the random binary array creating part. So, using a faster random binary array creator as suggested in this smart solution, the above function could be further optimized like so -
function RNGData = RNGAnsys_vect2(N,Data)
%// Create a random binary array and sum along the columns on the fly to
%// save on any variable space that would be required otherwise.
%// Also perform the elementwise multiplication as discussed before.
sumData = Data.*sum(rand(N,numel(Data))<0.5,1);
%// Divide by n, but account for 0.5 average by n/2
RNGData = (sumData./(N/2))'; %//'
return;
Using the smart binary random array creator, the original code could be optimized as well, that will be used for a fair benchmarking between optimized for-loop and vectorized codes later on. The optimized for-loop code is listed here -
function RNGData = RNGAnsys_opt1(N,Data)
multData = zeros(N,numel(Data));
for i = 1:numel(Data)
%// Create N number of random 0's or 1's using a smart approach
%// Then, multiply each element in the molar data by the random numbers
multData(:,i) = Data(i) * rand(N,1)<.5;
end
sumData = sum(multData,1); % sum each individual energy level's data point
RNGData = (sumData/(N/2))'; % divide by n, but account for 0.5 average by n/2
return;
Benchmarking
Benchmarking Code
N = 15000; %// Kept at this value as it going out of memory with higher N's.
%// Size of dataset is more important anyway as that decides how
%// well is vectorized code against a for-loop code
DS_arr = [50 100 200 500 800 1500 5000]; %// Dataset sizes
timeall = zeros(2,numel(DS_arr));
for k1 = 1:numel(DS_arr)
DS = DS_arr(k1);
Data = rand(1,DS);
f = #() RNGAnsys_opt1(N,Data);%// Optimized for-loop code
timeall(1,k1) = timeit(f);
clear f
f = #() RNGAnsys_vect2(N,Data);%// Vectorized Code
timeall(2,k1) = timeit(f);
clear f
end
%// Display benchmark results
figure,hold on, grid on
plot(DS_arr,timeall(1,:),'-ro')
plot(DS_arr,timeall(2,:),'-kx')
legend('Optimized for-loop code','Vectorized code')
xlabel('Dataset size ->'),ylabel('Time(sec) ->')
avg_speedup = mean(timeall(1,:)./timeall(2,:))
title(['Average Speedup with vectorized code = ' num2str(avg_speedup) 'x'])
Results
Concluding remarks
Based on the experience I had so far with MATLAB, neither for loops nor vectorized techniques are fit for all situations, but everything is situation-specific.
Try using the matlab profiler to determine which line or lines of code are using the most amount of time. That way you can find out if the repmat function is what is slowing you down as is being suggested. Let us know what you find, I'm interested!
randData = randint(N,length(DataSet));
allocates a 1.2GB array. (4*301*1000000). Implicitly you create up to 4 of these monsters in your program, causing continuous cache-misses.
You for-loop code could nearly run in the processor cache (or it does on the bigger xeons).
Suppose you have a list of floating point numbers that are approximately multiples of a common quantity, for example
2.468, 3.700, 6.1699
which are approximately all multiples of 1.234. How would you characterize this "approximate gcd", and how would you proceed to compute or estimate it?
Strictly related to my answer to this question.
You can run Euclid's gcd algorithm with anything smaller then 0.01 (or a small number of your choice) being a pseudo 0. With your numbers:
3.700 = 1 * 2.468 + 1.232,
2.468 = 2 * 1.232 + 0.004.
So the pseudo gcd of the first two numbers is 1.232. Now you take the gcd of this with your last number:
6.1699 = 5 * 1.232 + 0.0099.
So 1.232 is the pseudo gcd, and the mutiples are 2,3,5. To improve this result, you may take the linear regression on the data points:
(2,2.468), (3,3.7), (5,6.1699).
The slope is the improved pseudo gcd.
Caveat: the first part of this is algorithm is numerically unstable - if you start with very dirty data, you are in trouble.
Express your measurements as multiples of the lowest one. Thus your list becomes 1.00000, 1.49919, 2.49996. The fractional parts of these values will be very close to 1/Nths, for some value of N dictated by how close your lowest value is to the fundamental frequency. I would suggest looping through increasing N until you find a sufficiently refined match. In this case, for N=1 (that is, assuming X=2.468 is your fundamental frequency) you would find a standard deviation of 0.3333 (two of the three values are .5 off of X * 1), which is unacceptably high. For N=2 (that is, assuming 2.468/2 is your fundamental frequency) you would find a standard deviation of virtually zero (all three values are within .001 of a multiple of X/2), thus 2.468/2 is your approximate GCD.
The major flaw in my plan is that it works best when the lowest measurement is the most accurate, which is likely not the case. This could be mitigated by performing the entire operation multiple times, discarding the lowest value on the list of measurements each time, then use the list of results of each pass to determine a more precise result. Another way to refine the results would be adjust the GCD to minimize the standard deviation between integer multiples of the GCD and the measured values.
This reminds me of the problem of finding good rational-number approximations of real numbers. The standard technique is a continued-fraction expansion:
def rationalizations(x):
assert 0 <= x
ix = int(x)
yield ix, 1
if x == ix: return
for numer, denom in rationalizations(1.0/(x-ix)):
yield denom + ix * numer, numer
We could apply this directly to Jonathan Leffler's and Sparr's approach:
>>> a, b, c = 2.468, 3.700, 6.1699
>>> b/a, c/a
(1.4991896272285252, 2.4999594813614263)
>>> list(itertools.islice(rationalizations(b/a), 3))
[(1, 1), (3, 2), (925, 617)]
>>> list(itertools.islice(rationalizations(c/a), 3))
[(2, 1), (5, 2), (30847, 12339)]
picking off the first good-enough approximation from each sequence. (3/2 and 5/2 here.) Or instead of directly comparing 3.0/2.0 to 1.499189..., you could notice than 925/617 uses much larger integers than 3/2, making 3/2 an excellent place to stop.
It shouldn't much matter which of the numbers you divide by. (Using a/b and c/b you get 2/3 and 5/3, for instance.) Once you have integer ratios, you could refine the implied estimate of the fundamental using shsmurfy's linear regression. Everybody wins!
I'm assuming all of your numbers are multiples of integer values. For the rest of my explanation, A will denote the "root" frequency you are trying to find and B will be an array of the numbers you have to start with.
What you are trying to do is superficially similar to linear regression. You are trying to find a linear model y=mx+b that minimizes the average distance between a linear model and a set of data. In your case, b=0, m is the root frequency, and y represents the given values. The biggest problem is that the independent variables X are not explicitly given. The only thing we know about X is that all of its members must be integers.
Your first task is trying to determine these independent variables. The best method I can think of at the moment assumes that the given frequencies have nearly consecutive indexes (x_1=x_0+n). So B_0/B_1=(x_0)/(x_0+n) given a (hopefully) small integer n. You can then take advantage of the fact that x_0 = n/(B_1-B_0), start with n=1, and keep ratcheting it up until k-rnd(k) is within a certain threshold. After you have x_0 (the initial index), you can approximate the root frequency (A = B_0/x_0). Then you can approximate the other indexes by finding x_n = rnd(B_n/A). This method is not very robust and will probably fail if the error in the data is large.
If you want a better approximation of the root frequency A, you can use linear regression to minimize the error of the linear model now that you have the corresponding dependent variables. The easiest method to do so uses least squares fitting. Wolfram's Mathworld has a in-depth mathematical treatment of the issue, but a fairly simple explanation can be found with some googling.
Interesting question...not easy.
I suppose I would look at the ratios of the sample values:
3.700 / 2.468 = 1.499...
6.1699 / 2.468 = 2.4999...
6.1699 / 3.700 = 1.6675...
And I'd then be looking for a simple ratio of integers in those results.
1.499 ~= 3/2
2.4999 ~= 5/2
1.6675 ~= 5/3
I haven't chased it through, but somewhere along the line, you decide that an error of 1:1000 or something is good enough, and you back-track to find the base approximate GCD.
The solution which I've seen and used myself is to choose some constant, say 1000, multiply all numbers by this constant, round them to integers, find the GCD of these integers using the standard algorithm and then divide the result by the said constant (1000). The larger the constant, the higher the precision.
This is a reformulaiton of shsmurfy's solution when you a priori choose 3 positive tolerances (e1,e2,e3)
The problem is then to search smallest positive integers (n1,n2,n3) and thus largest root frequency f such that:
f1 = n1*f +/- e1
f2 = n2*f +/- e2
f3 = n3*f +/- e3
We assume 0 <= f1 <= f2 <= f3
If we fix n1, then we get these relations:
f is in interval I1=[(f1-e1)/n1 , (f1+e1)/n1]
n2 is in interval I2=[n1*(f2-e2)/(f1+e1) , n1*(f2+e2)/(f1-e1)]
n3 is in interval I3=[n1*(f3-e3)/(f1+e1) , n1*(f3+e3)/(f1-e1)]
We start with n1 = 1, then increment n1 until the interval I2 and I3 contain an integer - that is floor(I2min) different from floor(I2max) same with I3
We then choose smallest integer n2 in interval I2, and smallest integer n3 in interval I3.
Assuming normal distribution of floating point errors, the most probable estimate of root frequency f is the one minimizing
J = (f1/n1 - f)^2 + (f2/n2 - f)^2 + (f3/n3 - f)^2
That is
f = (f1/n1 + f2/n2 + f3/n3)/3
If there are several integers n2,n3 in intervals I2,I3 we could also choose the pair that minimize the residue
min(J)*3/2=(f1/n1)^2+(f2/n2)^2+(f3/n3)^2-(f1/n1)*(f2/n2)-(f1/n1)*(f3/n3)-(f2/n2)*(f3/n3)
Another variant could be to continue iteration and try to minimize another criterium like min(J(n1))*n1, until f falls below a certain frequency (n1 reaches an upper limit)...
I found this question looking for answers for mine in MathStackExchange (here and here).
I've only managed (yet) to measure the appeal of a fundamental frequency given a list of harmonic frequencies (following the sound/music nomenclature), which can be useful if you have a reduced number of options and is feasible to compute the appeal of each one and then choose the best fit.
C&P from my question in MSE (there the formatting is prettier):
being v the list {v_1, v_2, ..., v_n}, ordered from lower to higher
mean_sin(v, x) = sum(sin(2*pi*v_i/x), for i in {1, ...,n})/n
mean_cos(v, x) = sum(cos(2*pi*v_i/x), for i in {1, ...,n})/n
gcd_appeal(v, x) = 1 - sqrt(mean_sin(v, x)^2 + (mean_cos(v, x) - 1)^2)/2, which yields a number in the interval [0,1].
The goal is to find the x that maximizes the appeal. Here is the (gcd_appeal) graph for your example [2.468, 3.700, 6.1699], where you find that the optimum GCD is at x = 1.2337899957639993
Edit:
You may find handy this JAVA code to calculate the (fuzzy) divisibility (aka gcd_appeal) of a divisor relative to a list of dividends; you can use it to test which of your candidates makes the best divisor. The code looks ugly because I tried to optimize it for performance.
//returns the mean divisibility of dividend/divisor as a value in the range [0 and 1]
// 0 means no divisibility at all
// 1 means full divisibility
public double divisibility(double divisor, double... dividends) {
double n = dividends.length;
double factor = 2.0 / divisor;
double sum_x = -n;
double sum_y = 0.0;
double[] coord = new double[2];
for (double v : dividends) {
coordinates(v * factor, coord);
sum_x += coord[0];
sum_y += coord[1];
}
double err = 1.0 - Math.sqrt(sum_x * sum_x + sum_y * sum_y) / (2.0 * n);
//Might happen due to approximation error
return err >= 0.0 ? err : 0.0;
}
private void coordinates(double x, double[] out) {
//Bhaskara performant approximation to
//out[0] = Math.cos(Math.PI*x);
//out[1] = Math.sin(Math.PI*x);
long cos_int_part = (long) (x + 0.5);
long sin_int_part = (long) x;
double rem = x - cos_int_part;
if (cos_int_part != sin_int_part) {
double common_s = 4.0 * rem;
double cos_rem_s = common_s * rem - 1.0;
double sin_rem_s = cos_rem_s + common_s + 1.0;
out[0] = (((cos_int_part & 1L) * 8L - 4L) * cos_rem_s) / (cos_rem_s + 5.0);
out[1] = (((sin_int_part & 1L) * 8L - 4L) * sin_rem_s) / (sin_rem_s + 5.0);
} else {
double common_s = 4.0 * rem - 4.0;
double sin_rem_s = common_s * rem;
double cos_rem_s = sin_rem_s + common_s + 3.0;
double common_2 = ((cos_int_part & 1L) * 8L - 4L);
out[0] = (common_2 * cos_rem_s) / (cos_rem_s + 5.0);
out[1] = (common_2 * sin_rem_s) / (sin_rem_s + 5.0);
}
}