phase binning light curves

[Michael Hadrien]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to phase bin periodic light curves so that a periodically varying light curve over a period of days is folded onto itself and represented on a plot with a phased time axis of 0 to 1. I have a time and a brightness column and the method I'm using to process the data is:

1) take all of the values that lie at similar brightnesses and average them only with each other

2) for each different brightness average, i record where it first appeared on the plot it against the phased time value

This will ultimately give me a plot with one average curve representing all of the periods in the light curve. 

Are there any statistical functions available in Octave that approximate this? 

I've been searching but want to make sure that I don't miss any I may not have seen. 

Just trying to get a general sense on how to proceed with this project. 

Thanks!

--Michael