MATLAB BASICS AND A LITTLE BEYOND

A short introduction to Matlab

The purpose of this web page is to introduce Matlab to students of mathematics. It is not exhaustive, but describes commands and subroutines that might be commonly used by mathematicians.

This tutorial is intended as a cut and paste tutorial to Matlab's capabilities. The reader would be served to have this web page open along with a Matlab window. To execute Matlab in a Unix environment, at the prompt, type

matlab

and return. If Matlab is successfully executed, a small pop up window will appear with the Matlab logo. In the Unix window, an introductory message will stream by and the matlab prompt

>>

will appear. To enter commands in Matlab, simply type them in. Beware that Matlab is case sensitive.

This tutorial contains Matlab code. Each line of Matlab code starts with the prompt >>. When you cut a segment of code from this tutorial, do not cut the prompt >> .

Matlab's advantages

Matlab is an interpreted language for numerical computation. It allows one to perform numerical calculations, and visualize the results without the need for complicated and time consuming programming. Matlab allows its users to accurately solve problems, produce graphics easily and produce code effeciently.