Mean value of each row

Hi everyone, so I have a 5287x1103 (double) matrix of precipitation data. I basically wanna compute a vector with the mean of each row:

1. load('mymatrix');
2. mean_H = mean ('mymatrix',2);

At least this is what should do the trick in my opinion. However it only computes a single value (i.e. the total mean)...

can anyone help me out? Thank you very much, Oliver

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Surely, you meant:

mean_H = mean(mymatrix, 2); %note the absence of '

Otherwise you're computing the mean of ascii values of the string 'mymatrix'

[Guillaume]

Oliver's comment posted as an answer: Hmm...the error "Argument must contain a string" pops up. Sorry I'm a complete newbie. Is there sth wrong with the imported data format? cheers

[Guillaume]

Can you post the entire error message that you get (everything in red)?

[Oliver Weiss]

Error using load
Argument must contain a string

[Oliver Weiss]

Okay I figured it out. Just set a bracket to many...Thank you very much for your quick response tho :) Cheers, Oliver

[Guillaume]

load takes a string which represents the name of the file you want to load. It creates a variable with the same name.

mean takes a variable.

The code should be

load('mymatrix'); %create variable mymatrix
mean_H = mean(mymatrix, 2);

Perhaps, you'd see the difference better if you put the extension in the file name:

load('mymatrix.mat') %obviously can't be a variable
mean_H = mean(mymatrix, 2);

[Image Analyst]

Oliver's reply moved from an "Answer" to a comment here:

Hmm...the error "Argument must contain a string" pops up. Sorry I'm a complete newbie. Is there something wrong with the imported data format? cheers

[Image Analyst]

Then you should read this where it explains that we need the complete error message - ALL THE RED TEXT - so we know what line of code you're talking about. In the meantime, try this:

fullFileName = fullfile(pwd, 'mymatrix.mat');
if exist(fullFileName, 'file')
    storedStructure = load(fullFileName)
    mymatrix = storedStructure.mymatrix;
    mean_H = mean(mymatrix, 2); % Means across columns.
else
    warningMessage = sprintf('The file does not exist:\n%s', fullFileName);
    uiwait(warndlg(warningMessage));
    mean_H = [];
end