A stereographic test of spherical uniformity

Abstract

We introduce a test of uniformity for (hyper)spherical data motivated by the stereographic projection. The closed-form expression of the test statistic and its null asymptotic distribution are derived using Gegenbauer polynomials. The power against rotationally symmetric local alternatives is provided, and simulations illustrate the non-null asymptotic results. The stereographic test outperforms other tests in a testing scenario with antipodal dependence between observations.