Page 41 - A Guide to MATLAB for Beginners and Experienced Users

22 Chapter 2: MATLAB Basics

To change the vector X from a row vector to a column vector, put a prime (’)
after X:

>> X’

ans =
0
2
4
6
8
10

You can perform mathematical operations on vectors. For example, to square
the elements of the vector X, type

>> X.ˆ2

ans =
0 4 16 36 64 100

The period in this expression is very important; it says that the numbers
in X should be squared individually, or element-by-element. Typing Xˆ2 would
tell MATLAB to use matrix multiplication to multiply X by itself and would
produce an error message in this case. (We discuss matrices below and in
Chapter 4.) Similarly, you must type .* or ./ if you want to multiply or di-
vide vectors element-by-element. For example, to multiply the elements of the
vector X by the corresponding elements of the vector Y, type

>> X.*Y

ans =
0 -6 20 -12 64 10

Most MATLAB operations are, by default, performed element-by-element.
For example, you do not type a period for addition and subtraction, and you
can type exp(X) to get the exponential of each number in X (the matrix ex-
ponential function is expm). One of the strengths of MATLAB is its ability to
efficiently perform operations on vectors.