User:Rs2~enwikibooks/Matlab

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Preface
2004, March 22nd

For better or for worse, Matlab has become part of modern engineering. For those who work with Matlab regularly, few things are as frustrating as knowing that Matlab can solve one's problem, but not knowing how. For this reason, I wanted to start a Matlab Wiki. Every time I need to figure out how to do something by myself or give up and e-mail Mathworks support, I have the desire to prevent others from repeating the process. A few dozen people collaborating on a Wiki could help each other a great deal. A few hundred people collaborating could write the definitive Matlab reference. Feel free to criticize me as wickedly as you like, just make sure that the effect of your edits are increases in the amount of information or in its clarity. My plan is to write an entry a day, starting with things that are undocumented or poorly documented on the internet. Hopefully you will join in.

--Rs2 05:41, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * I'm just starting out with this whole Wikibooks thing, and I'd like to contribute where I can. Hopefully soon I can contribute to the Matlab book-to-be, but until I dust off my cobwebs, I'm just going to start with some minor copy editing, such as changing all the interwiki links to the short form that doesn't generate the off-site image. Scott B

Introduction
From Wikipedia: (all links to Wikipedia) MATLAB is a computer program by MathWorks which allows one to easily manipulate matrices, plot functions and data, and implement algorithms in its own internal programming language. It runs on Windows, MacOS, Linux, and Unix and is widely used in the teaching of linear algebra and numerical analysis. The language was invented by Cleve Moler in the late 1970s.

Free software alternatives to MATLAB include GNU Octave and Scilab, which have an identical (or at least very similar) syntax. Another free alternative is Python in combination with libraries like Numeric Python and SciPy.

Controls
Gone are the days when engineers used drafting boards and pencils. In today's world, high speed computing replaces hand-drawn Bode, Nyquist, root locus, and Nichols plots as well as impulse and step responses with numerically generated ones.