1. Introduction to MATLAB
Northeastern University: College of Computer and Information Science
Co-op Preparation University (CPU)
10/22/2003

2. Overview for 10/22/2003
Review of topics covered in last session (10/20/2003)
Review of the MATLAB environment (covered in last session)
Declaring and manipulating variables
Useful functions

3. Review of 10/20/2003
Contact Information
Course Overview
MATLAB Overview

4. Contact Information
“Office Hours”: Wednesday after class
Some information available:

5. Course Overview
Course Structure

6. Course Structure Week 1: Overview of MATLAB Week 2: Basic MATLAB
History of MATLAB
Overview of MATLAB environment
Discussion of MATLAB in co-op
Week 2: Basic MATLAB
Simple MATLAB functionality
Syntax, Commands
Exercises involving basic MATLAB functionality

7. Course Structure, con’t: 2
Week 3: Advanced MATLAB Functionality
Beyond MATLAB as a calculator
The MATLAB programming language
Project showcasing MATLABs advanced functionality

8. Meeting Times and Locations
Week 1
Class 1
Monday, Oct. 20, p.m., 257 CN
Class 2
Wednesday, Oct. 22, p.m., 257 CN
Class 3
Thursday, Oct. 23, p.m., 247 CN

9. Meeting Times and Locations, con’t: 2
Week 2
Class 1
Monday, Oct. 27, p.m., 257 CN
Class 2
Wednesday, Oct. 29, p.m., 257 CN
Class 3
Thursday, Oct. 30, p.m., 247 CN

10. Meeting Times and Locations, con’t: 3
Week 3
Class 1
Monday, Nov. 3, p.m., 257 CN
Class 2
Wednesday, Nov. 5, p.m., 257 CN
Class 3
Thursday, Nov. 6, p.m., 247 CN

11. Coursework Collection of exercises: Final project:
Will occur during the second week
Will involve MATLABs basic functionality
Final project:
Will occur during the final two sessions
Will cover MATLABs basic and advanced functionality

12. History of MATLAB Ancestral software to MATLAB
Fortran subroutines for solving linear (LINPACK) and eigenvalue (EISPACK) problems
Developed primarily by Cleve Moler in the 1970’s

13. History of MATLAB, con’t: 2
Later, when teaching courses in mathematics, Moler wanted his students to be able to use LINPACK and EISPACK without requiring knowledge of Fortran
MATLAB developed as an interactive system to access LINPACK and EISPACK

14. History of MATLAB, con’t: 3
MATLAB gained popularity primarily through word of mouth because it was not officially distributed
In the 1980’s, MATLAB was rewritten in C with more functionality (such as plotting routines)

15. History of MATLAB, con’t: 4
The Mathworks, Inc. was created in 1984
The Mathworks is now responsible for development, sale, and support for MATLAB
The Mathworks is located in Natick, MA
The Mathworks is an employer that hires co-ops through our co-op program

16. MATLAB GUI Launch Pad / Toolbox Workspace Current Directory
Command History
Command Window

17. Launch Pad / Toolbox Will not be covered
Launch Pad allows you to start help/demos
Toolbox is for use with specialized packages (Signal Processing)

18. Workspace Allows access to data
Area of memory managed through the Command Window
Shows Name, Size (in elements), Number of Bytes and Type of Variable

19. Current Directory
MATLAB, like Windows or UNIX, has a current directory
MATLAB functions can be called from any directory
Your programs (to be discussed later) are only available if the current directory is the one that they exist in

20. Command History
Allows access to the commands used during this session, and possibly previous sessions
Clicking and dragging to the Command window allows you to re-execute previous commands

21. Command Window Probably the most important part of the GUI
Allows you to input the commands that will create variables, modify variables and even (later) execute scripts and functions you program yourself.

22. Simple Commands
who
whos
save
clear
load

23. who who lists the variables currently in the workspace.
As we learn more about the data structures available in MATLAB, we will see more uses of “who”

24. whos
whos is similar to who, but also gives size and storage information
s = whos(...) returns a structure with these fields name variable name size variable size bytes number of bytes allocated for the array class class of variable and assigns it to the variable s. (We will discuss structures more).

25. Save save – saves workspace variables on disk
save filename stores all workspace variables in the current directory in filename.mat
save filename var1 var2 ... saves only the specified workspace variables in filename.mat. Use the * wildcard to save only those variables that match the specified pattern.

26. Clear clear removes items from workspace, freeing up system memory
Examples of syntax:
clear
clear name
clear name1 name2 name3 ...

27. clc
Not quite clear
clc clears only the command window, and has no effect on variables in the workspace.

28. Load load - loads workspace variables from disk Examples of Syntax:
load filename
load filename X Y Z

29. Declaring a variable in MATLAB
Not necessary to specify a type. (Such as int or float)
Several kinds of variables:
Vector
Matrix
Structure
Cell array

30. Declaring a variable, con’t: 2
For an integer or floating point number: simply set a variable name equal to some character
Ex. A = 5;
Or A = 5

31. Sidenote 1
The presence or lack of a semi-colon after a MATLAB command does not generate an error of any kind
The presence of a semi-colon tells MATLAB to suppress the screen output of the command

32. Sidenote 1, con’t: 2
The lack of a semi-colon will make MATLAB output the result of the command you entered
One of these options is not necessarily better than the other

33. Declaring a variable, con’t: 3
You may now use the simple integer or float that you used like a normal number (though internally it is treated like a 1 by 1 matrix)
Possible operations:
+, -, /
Many functions (round(), ceil(), floor())

34. Declaring a variable, con’t: 4
You may also make a vector rather simply
The syntax is to set a variable name equal to some numbers, which are surrounded by brackets and separated by either spaces or commas
Ex. A = [ ];
Or A = [1,2,3,4,5];

35. Declaring a variable, con’t: 5
You may also declare a variable in a general fashion much more quickly
Ex. A = 1:1:10
The first 1 would indicate the number to begin counting at
The second 1 would be the increase each time
And the count would end at 10

36. Declaring a variable, con’t: 6
Matrices are the primary variable type for MATLAB
Matrices are declared similar to the declaration of a vector
Begin with a variable name, and set it equal to a set of numbers, surrounded by brackets. Each number should be seperated by a comma or semi-colon

37. Declaring a variable, con’t: 7
The semi-colons in a matrix declaration indicate where the row would end
Ex. A = [ 1,2;3,4] would create a matrix that looks like
[ 1 2
3 4 ]

38. Declaring a variable, con’t: 7
Matrices may be used as normal variables now. Multiplying is already defined for matrices, and additional code does not need to be written.

39. Declaring a variable, con’t: 8
The final type of variable we will discuss today will be a struct.
The command struct is used to create a structure
Syntax:
s = struct('field1',{},'field2',{},...)
s = struct('field1',values1,'field2',values2,...)

40. Declaring a variable, con’t 9
A simple declaration of a structure is as follows:
Student.name = “Joe”;
Student.age = 23;
Student.major = “Computer Science”;

41. Declaring a variable, con’t: 10
Arrays of structures are possible.
Taking the previous example, if one were to write:
Student(2).name = “Bill”
…etc
Then the array would be created for you.

42. Declaring a variable, con’t: 11
Structures can group information, but methods are not written for them.

43. Another satisfied MATLAB user!
End