Topic 1/2: MATLAB Introduction and MATLAB as a calculator

• perform time-consuming tasks quickly

• solve a wide range of interesting and difficult problems

• visualise our data models, enabling us to interpret our results

what is the role of computers in modern-day engineering

• hardware - the physical components of a computer

• software - the set of instructions (i.e. computer programs) that control the hardware

what is a computer composed of

• Computer-Aided Design

• Computer-Aided Manufacturing

• Electronic Design Automation

• Integrated Development Environments

• Finite Element Analysis

• Computational Fluid Dynamics

• Simulation

• Optimisation

what are examples of software or methods enabled by software that engineers might use to solve their problems

• simplifies the analysis of mathematical models

• frees us from coding in lower-level languages (save time - with some computational speed penalties)

• provides an extensible programming and visualisation environment

• provides professional looking graphs

• provides powerful toolboxes (i.e. extensions to the core functionality) tailored to specific applications

• is platform independent (support for several different operating systems, including Windows, Mac, and Linux)

• is linkable to other software (i.e. we can use MATLAB with other programming languages, such as: C/C+, Java, FORTAN, and Python)

what are the advantages of using MATLAB

• is an interpreted language (i.e. not a pre-compiled language), so it can be slow

• costs money to use, so it can be expensive

what are the disadvantages of using MATLAB

• addition

  • >> 5 + 4 = 9

• subtraction

  • >> 5 - 4 = 1

• multiplication

  • >> 5 * 4 = 20

• division

  • >> 5 / 4 = 1.25

• power

  • >> 5 ^ 4 = 625

how can we use MATLAB as a calculator

• Brackets

• Exponents

• Division

• Multiplication

• Addition

• Subtraction

what is the order of operations

• >> sqrt (4)

• >> abs (-3)

• >> sin (90)

• >> sin (pi/2)

what are examples of the built-in mathematical functions in MATLAB

displays summary information on what a function does

what is the use of the help (name) function

provides detailed information on what a function does

what does the doc (name) function do

resets variables

what does the clear function do

• variable names can only use a combination of

  • alphanumeric characters

  • the underscore _ character

• variable names cannot contain

  • whitespace

  • begin with a number

how do we name variables