Plotting a fast Fourier transform in Python

So I run a functionally equivalent form of your code in an IPython notebook:

%matplotlib inline
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import scipy.fftpack

# Number of samplepoints
N = 600
# sample spacing
T = 1.0 / 800.0
x = np.linspace(0.0, N*T, N)
y = np.sin(50.0 * 2.0*np.pi*x) + 0.5*np.sin(80.0 * 2.0*np.pi*x)
yf = scipy.fftpack.fft(y)
xf = np.linspace(0.0, 1.0/(2.0*T), N//2)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(xf, 2.0/N * np.abs(yf[:N//2]))
plt.show()

I get what I believe to be very reasonable output.

It's been longer than I care to admit since I was in engineering school thinking about signal processing, but spikes at 50 and 80 are exactly what I would expect. So what's the issue?

In response to the raw data and comments being posted

The problem here is that you don't have periodic data. You should always inspect the data that you feed into any algorithm to make sure that it's appropriate.

import pandas
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
#import seaborn
%matplotlib inline

# the OP's data
x = pandas.read_csv('http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=ksM4FvZS', skiprows=2, header=None).values
y = pandas.read_csv('http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=0WhjjMkb', skiprows=2, header=None).values
fig, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.plot(x, y)

The important thing about fft is that it can only be applied to data in which the timestamp is uniform (i.e. uniform sampling in time, like what you have shown above).

In case of non-uniform sampling, please use a function for fitting the data. There are several tutorials and functions to choose from:

https://github.com/tiagopereira/python_tips/wiki/Scipy%3A-curve-fitting http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/reference/generated/numpy.polyfit.html

If fitting is not an option, you can directly use some form of interpolation to interpolate data to a uniform sampling:

https://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy-0.14.0/reference/tutorial/interpolate.html

When you have uniform samples, you will only have to wory about the time delta (t[1] - t[0]) of your samples. In this case, you can directly use the fft functions

Y    = numpy.fft.fft(y)
freq = numpy.fft.fftfreq(len(y), t[1] - t[0])

pylab.figure()
pylab.plot( freq, numpy.abs(Y) )
pylab.figure()
pylab.plot(freq, numpy.angle(Y) )
pylab.show()

This should solve your problem.

The high spike that you have is due to the DC (non-varying, i.e. freq = 0) portion of your signal. It's an issue of scale. If you want to see non-DC frequency content, for visualization, you may need to plot from the offset 1 not from offset 0 of the FFT of the signal.

Modifying the example given above by @PaulH

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import scipy.fftpack

# Number of samplepoints
N = 600
# sample spacing
T = 1.0 / 800.0
x = np.linspace(0.0, N*T, N)
y = 10 + np.sin(50.0 * 2.0*np.pi*x) + 0.5*np.sin(80.0 * 2.0*np.pi*x)
yf = scipy.fftpack.fft(y)
xf = np.linspace(0.0, 1.0/(2.0*T), N/2)

plt.subplot(2, 1, 1)
plt.plot(xf, 2.0/N * np.abs(yf[0:N/2]))
plt.subplot(2, 1, 2)
plt.plot(xf[1:], 2.0/N * np.abs(yf[0:N/2])[1:])

The output plots:

Another way, is to visualize the data in log scale:

Using:

plt.semilogy(xf, 2.0/N * np.abs(yf[0:N/2]))

Will show:

Just as a complement to the answers already given, I would like to point out that often it is important to play with the size of the bins for the FFT. It would make sense to test a bunch of values and pick the one that makes more sense to your application. Often, it is in the same magnitude of the number of samples. This was as assumed by most of the answers given, and produces great and reasonable results. In case one wants to explore that, here is my code version:

%matplotlib inline
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import scipy.fftpack

fig = plt.figure(figsize=[14,4])
N = 600           # Number of samplepoints
Fs = 800.0
T = 1.0 / Fs      # N_samps*T (#samples x sample period) is the sample spacing.
N_fft = 80        # Number of bins (chooses granularity)
x = np.linspace(0, N*T, N)     # the interval
y = np.sin(50.0 * 2.0*np.pi*x) + 0.5*np.sin(80.0 * 2.0*np.pi*x)   # the signal

# removing the mean of the signal
mean_removed = np.ones_like(y)*np.mean(y)
y = y - mean_removed

# Compute the fft.
yf = scipy.fftpack.fft(y,n=N_fft)
xf = np.arange(0,Fs,Fs/N_fft)

##### Plot the fft #####
ax = plt.subplot(121)
pt, = ax.plot(xf,np.abs(yf), lw=2.0, c='b')
p = plt.Rectangle((Fs/2, 0), Fs/2, ax.get_ylim()[1], facecolor="grey", fill=True, alpha=0.75, hatch="/", zorder=3)
ax.add_patch(p)
ax.set_xlim((ax.get_xlim()[0],Fs))
ax.set_title('FFT', fontsize= 16, fontweight="bold")
ax.set_ylabel('FFT magnitude (power)')
ax.set_xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
plt.legend((p,), ('mirrowed',))
ax.grid()

##### Close up on the graph of fft#######
# This is the same histogram above, but truncated at the max frequence + an offset. 
offset = 1    # just to help the visualization. Nothing important.
ax2 = fig.add_subplot(122)
ax2.plot(xf,np.abs(yf), lw=2.0, c='b')
ax2.set_xticks(xf)
ax2.set_xlim(-1,int(Fs/6)+offset)
ax2.set_title('FFT close-up', fontsize= 16, fontweight="bold")
ax2.set_ylabel('FFT magnitude (power) - log')
ax2.set_xlabel('Frequency (Hz)')
ax2.hold(True)
ax2.grid()

plt.yscale('log')

the output plots:

I've built a function that deals with plotting FFT of real signals. The extra bonus in my function relative to the previous answers is that you get the actual amplitude of the signal.

Also, because of the assumption of a real signal, the FFT is symmetric, so we can plot only the positive side of the x-axis:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import warnings


def fftPlot(sig, dt=None, plot=True):
    # Here it's assumes analytic signal (real signal...) - so only half of the axis is required

    if dt is None:
        dt = 1
        t = np.arange(0, sig.shape[-1])
        xLabel = 'samples'
    else:
        t = np.arange(0, sig.shape[-1]) * dt
        xLabel = 'freq [Hz]'

    if sig.shape[0] % 2 != 0:
        warnings.warn("signal preferred to be even in size, autoFixing it...")
        t = t[0:-1]
        sig = sig[0:-1]

    sigFFT = np.fft.fft(sig) / t.shape[0]  # Divided by size t for coherent magnitude

    freq = np.fft.fftfreq(t.shape[0], d=dt)

    # Plot analytic signal - right half of frequence axis needed only...
    firstNegInd = np.argmax(freq < 0)
    freqAxisPos = freq[0:firstNegInd]
    sigFFTPos = 2 * sigFFT[0:firstNegInd]  # *2 because of magnitude of analytic signal

    if plot:
        plt.figure()
        plt.plot(freqAxisPos, np.abs(sigFFTPos))
        plt.xlabel(xLabel)
        plt.ylabel('mag')
        plt.title('Analytic FFT plot')
        plt.show()

    return sigFFTPos, freqAxisPos


if __name__ == "__main__":
    dt = 1 / 1000

    # Build a signal within Nyquist - the result will be the positive FFT with actual magnitude
    f0 = 200  # [Hz]
    t = np.arange(0, 1 + dt, dt)
    sig = 1 * np.sin(2 * np.pi * f0 * t) + \
        10 * np.sin(2 * np.pi * f0 / 2 * t) + \
        3 * np.sin(2 * np.pi * f0 / 4 * t) +\
        7.5 * np.sin(2 * np.pi * f0 / 5 * t)

    # Result in frequencies
    fftPlot(sig, dt=dt)
    # Result in samples (if the frequencies axis is unknown)
    fftPlot(sig)