MATLAB Guide

Book excerpt: MATLAB is an interactive system for numerical computation that is widely used for teaching and research in industry and academia. It provides a modern programming language and problem solving environment, with powerful data structures, customizable graphics, and easy-to-use editing and debugging tools. This third edition of MATLAB Guide completely revises and updates the best-selling second edition and is more than 30 percent longer. The book remains a lively, concise introduction to the most popular and important features of MATLAB and the Symbolic Math Toolbox. Key features are a tutorial in Chapter 1 that gives a hands-on overview of MATLAB; a thorough treatment of MATLAB mathematics, including the linear algebra and numerical analysis functions and the differential equation solvers; and a web page at http://www.siam.org/books/ot150 that provides example program files, updates, and links to MATLAB resources. The new edition contains color figures throughout; includes pithy discussions of related topics in new ?Asides" boxes that augment the text; has new chapters on the Parallel Computing Toolbox, object-oriented programming, graphs, and large data sets; covers important new MATLAB data types such as categorical arrays, string arrays, tall arrays, tables, and timetables; contains more on MATLAB workflow, including the Live Editor and unit tests; and fully reflects major updates to the MATLAB graphics system. This book is suitable for both beginners and more experienced users, including students, researchers, and practitioners.