Page 28 - A Guide to MATLAB for Beginners and Experienced Users

Arithmetic 9

Figure 2-1: MATLAB Output.

and “ˆ” to exponentiate. For example,
>> 3ˆ2 - (5 + 4)/2 + 6*3

ans =
22.5000
MATLAB prints the answer and assigns the value to a variable called ans.
If you want to perform further calculations with the answer, you can use the
variable ans rather than retype the answer. For example, you can compute
the sum of the square and the square root of the previous answer as follows:

>> ansˆ2 + sqrt(ans)

ans =
510.9934

Observe that MATLAB assigns a new value to ans witheachcalculation.
To do more complex calculations, you can assign computed values to variables
of your choosing. For example,
>> u = cos(10)

u=
-0.8391