Page 14 - A Guide to MATLAB for Beginners and Experienced Users

Preface

MATLAB is an integrated technical computing environment that combines
numeric computation, advanced graphics and visualization, and a high-
level programming language.
– www.mathworks.com/products/matlab

That statement encapsulates the view of The MathWorks, Inc., the developer of

MATLAB . MATLAB 6 is an ambitious program. It contains hundreds of com-
mands to do mathematics. You can use it to graph functions, solve equations,
perform statistical tests, and do much more. It is a high-level programming
language that can communicate with its cousins, e.g., FORTRAN and C. You
can produce sound and animate graphics. You can do simulations and mod-
eling (especially if you have access not just to basic MATLAB but also to its

accessory SIMULINK ). You can prepare materials for export to the World
Wide Web. In addition, you can use MATLAB, in conjunction withthe word

processing and desktop publishing features of Microsoft Word , to combine
mathematical computations with text and graphics to produce a polished, in-
tegrated, and interactive document.
A program this sophisticated contains many features and options. There
are literally hundreds of useful commands at your disposal. The MATLAB
help documentation contains thousands of entries. The standard references,
whether the MathWorks User’s Guide for the product, or any of our com-
petitors, contain myriad tables describing an endless stream of commands,
options, and features that the user might be expected to learn or access.
MATLAB is more than a fancy calculator; it is an extremely useful and
versatile tool. Even if you only know a little about MATLAB, you can use it
to accomplish wonderful things. The hard part, however, is figuring out which
of the hundreds of commands, scores of help pages, and thousands of items of
documentation you need to look at to start using it quickly and effectively.
That’s where we come in.

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