MATLAB For Dummies

Getting Started With MATLAB

webextras.eps For great online content, check out http://www.dummies.com.

In this part …

Discover why you want to start using MATLAB to speed your calculation.

Install MATLAB on your particular system.

Start working with MATLAB to become better acquainted with the program.

Perform some simple tasks to understand the interface.

Become familiar with the MATLAB file system.

Chapter 1

Introducing MATLAB and Its Many Uses

In This Chapter

arrow Understanding how MATLAB fits in as a tool for performing math tasks

arrow Seeing where MATLAB is used today

arrow Discovering how to get the most from MATLAB

arrow Overcoming the MATLAB learning curve

Math is the basis of all our science and even some of our art. In fact, math itself can be an art form — consider the beauty of fractals (a visual presentation of a specialized equation). However, math is also abstract and can be quite difficult and complex to work with. MATLAB makes performing math-related tasks easier. You use MATLAB to perform math-related tasks such as

Numerical computation

Visualization

Programming

This chapter introduces you to MATLAB, an application that performs a variety of math tasks. It helps you understand the role that MATLAB can play in reducing the overall complexity of math and in explaining math-related information to others more easily. You also discover that MATLAB is already used by a number of different organizations to perform real-world tasks in a manner that improves accuracy, efficiency, and consistency. Of course, knowing how you can translate these benefits of MATLAB to your own workplace is important.

Because MATLAB can do so much, it does have a learning curve. This chapter also discusses what you can do to reduce the learning curve so that you become productive much faster. The less time you spend learning about MATLAB, the more time you spend applying math to your particular specialty, and the better the results you achieve. Getting things done quickly and accurately is the overall goal of MATLAB.

Putting MATLAB in Its Place

MATLAB is all about math. Yes, it’s a powerful tool and yes, it includes its own language to make the execution of math-related tasks faster, easier, and more consistent. However, when you get right down to it, the focus of MATLAB is the math. For example, you could type 2 + 2 as an equation and MATLAB would dutifully report the sum of 4 as output. Of course, no one would buy an application to compute 2 + 2 — you could easily do that with a calculator. So you need to understand just what MATLAB can do. The following sections help you put MATLAB into perspective so that you better understand how you can use it to perform useful work.

Understanding how MATLAB relates to a Turing machine

Today’s computers are mostly Turing machines, named after the British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954). The main emphasis of a Turing machine is performing tasks step by step. A single processor performs one step at a time. It may work on multiple tasks, but only a single step of a specific task is performed at any given time. Knowing about the Turing machine orientation of computers is important because MATLAB follows precisely the same strategy. It, too, performs tasks one step at a time in a procedural fashion. In fact, you can download an application that simulates a Turing machine using MATLAB at http://www.mathworks.com/MATLABcentral/fileexchange/23006-turing-machine-emulator/content/@turing/turing.m. The code is surprisingly short.

remember.eps Don’t confuse the underlying computer with the programming languages used to create applications for it. Even though the programs that drive the computer may be designed to give the illusion of some other technique, when you look at how the computer works, you see that it goes step by step. If you’ve never learned how computers run programs, this information is meaningful background. Refer to the nearby sidebar "Understanding how computers work" for a discussion of this important background information.

Understanding how computers work

Many older programmers are geeks who punched cards before TVs had transistors. One advantage of punching cards is getting to physically touch and feel the computer’s instructions and data. This physicality gave programmers a good understanding of what happens when a program runs.

Today, the instructions and data are stored as charges of electrons in tiny pieces of silicon too small to be seen through even the most powerful optical microscope. Today’s computers can handle much more information much more quickly than early machines. But the way they use that information is basically the same as early computers.

In those old card decks, programmers wrote one instruction on each card. After all the instructions, they put the data cards into a card reader. The computer read a card and the computer did what the card told it to do: Get some data, get more data, add it together, divide, and so on until all the instructions were executed.

A series of instructions is a program. The following figure shows a basic schematic block diagram of how a computer works.

Unchanged from the old days, when cards were read one at a time, computer instructions continue to be read one at a time. The instruction is executed, and then the computer goes to the next instruction. MATLAB executes programs in this manner as well.

It’s important to realize that the flow of a program can change. Computers can make decisions based on specific criterion, such as whether something is true or false, and take the route indicated for that decision. For example, when the computer has read all the data for a task, the program tells the computer to quit reading data and start doing calculations. Mapping how the computer executes programs is called a flow chart, which is similar to a road map with intersections where decisions must be made. MATLAB relies on well-designed flow charts to make it easy to see what the computer will do, when it will do it, and how it will accomplish the required tasks.

The whole concept of a program may seem foreign to many — something that only geeks would ever love — but you’ve already used the concept of a program before. When using a calculator, you first think of the steps and numbers you want to enter and in what sequence to enter them to solve your problem. A program, including a MATLAB program, is simply a sequence of similar steps stored in a file that the computer reads and executes one at a time. You don’t need to fear computer programming — you’ve probably done something very similar quite often and can do it easily again.

Using MATLAB as more than a calculator

MATLAB is a computer programming language, not merely a calculator. However, you can use it like a calculator, and doing so is a good technique to try ideas that you might use in your program. When you get past the experimentation stage, though, you usually rely on MATLAB to create a program that helps you perform tasks

Consistently

Easily

Quickly

With these three characteristics in mind, the following sections explore the idea of MATLAB’s being more than a simple calculator in greater detail. These sections don’t tell you everything MATLAB can do, but they do provide you with ideas that you can pursue and use to your own advantage.

Exploring Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)

Schools currently have a strong emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) topics because the world doesn’t have enough people who understand these disciplines to get the required work done. Innovation of any sort requires these disciplines, as do many practical trades. MATLAB has a rich and large toolbox for STEM that includes

Statistics

Simulation

Image processing

Symbolic processing

Numerical analysis

Performing simple tasks

Many developers start learning their trade using an older language named Basic. Originally, it was spelled BASIC, for Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. The intent behind Basic was to make the language simple. MATLAB retains the simplicity of Basic, but with a much larger toolbox to solve STEM problems. The idea is that you have better things to do than learn how to program using a complex language designed to meet needs that your programs will never address.

remember.eps Everything has trade-offs. MATLAB is specifically designed to meet the needs of people who use math for learning or to make a living. It gets rid of the complexity found in many other languages and keeps things simple so that you can focus on your work rather than on the tool you’re using to do it. However, in pursuing simplicity, MATLAB is also less flexible than other programming languages, provides fewer advanced features for tasks you’ll never perform anyway, and offers fewer generic tools. MATLAB is designed to meet specific needs rather than work as a general-purpose language.

Determining why you need MATLAB

It’s important to know how to use any application you adopt, but it’s equally important to know when to use it and what it can actually do for your organization. If you don’t have a strong reason to use an application, the purchase will eventually sit on the shelf collecting dust. This bit of dust collecting happens far too often in corporations around the world today because people don’t have a clear idea of why they even need a particular application. Given that MATLAB can perform so many tasks, you don’t want it to just sit on the shelf. The following sections can help you build a case for buying and then using MATLAB in your organization.

Relying on structure for better organization

Writing programs is all about telling the computer to perform a task one step at a time. The better your language tells the computer what to do, the easier the computer will be to use and the less time you’ll spend getting it to perform a given task.

Starting with the C and Pascal computer languages, developers began creating structured environments. In such an environment, a map of instructions and decisions doesn’t look like a bowl of spaghetti — hard to follow and make sense of — but looks more like a tree, with a trunk and branches that are much easier to follow and understand. MATLAB places a strong emphasis on structure (for example, in the way it organizes data and in the manner in which you write code), which means that you spend a lot more time doing something fun and a lot less time writing code (because the structure means that you work with data in a consistent manner).

remember.eps Structure does come with a price (there really are trade-offs to everything). Early developers could write an application quickly because they had few rules to follow. Because newer languages do enforce structure (making the code easier to read and update later), you have to spend time learning the rules. The rules are what produce the learning curve in MATLAB that you need to consider as part of working with the product. Make sure that you set realistic goals and establish a timetable that reflects the need to learn programming rules. You can’t rush through the MATLAB learning process and expect to do anything useful at the end.

Avoiding the complexity of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)

You may have heard of Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). It’s a discipline that helps developers create applications based on real-world models. Every element of an application becomes an object that has specific characteristics and can perform specific tasks. This technology is quite useful to developers because it helps them create extremely complex applications with fewer errors and less coding time.

However, OOP isn’t something you need to know in order to work through various types of math problems. Even though you can solve difficult math problems using languages that do support OOP, STEM users can exploit most of MATLAB’s power without OOP. The lack of an OOP requirement means that you can get up and running with MATLAB far faster than you could with a conventional modern programming language and without a loss of the functionality that you need to perform math tasks.

OOP does serve a useful purpose — just not a purpose that you need when creating math models. Leave the complex OOP languages to developers who are creating the software used to access huge databases, or developing a new operating system. MATLAB is designed to make things easy for you.

Using the powerful toolbox

MATLAB provides a toolbox designed to meet the specific needs of STEM users. In contrast to a general programming language, this toolbox provides specific functionality needed to meet certain STEM objectives. Here is just a small sample of the areas that are addressed by the tools you find in the MATLAB toolbox:

Algebra

Linear algebra — many equations dealing with many unknowns

Calculus

Differential equations

Statistics

Curve fitting

Graphing

Preparing reports

Reducing programming effort with the fourth-generation language

Programming languages are often rated by their generation. For example, a first-generation language works side by side with the hardware. It’s the sort of language that programmers used when computers first appeared on the scene. Nothing is wrong with working directly with the hardware, but you need specialized knowledge to do it, and writing such code is time consuming. A first-generation language is so hard to use that even the developers decided to create something better — second-generation languages! (Second-generation languages, such as Macro Assembler [MASM] are somewhat human-readable, must be assembled into executable code before use, and are still specific to a particular processor.)

technicalstuff.eps Most developers today use a combination of third-generation languages such as C, C++, and Java, and fourth-generation languages such as Structured Query Language (SQL). A third-generation language gives the developer the kind of precise control needed to write exceptionally fast applications that can perform a wide array of tasks. Fourth-generation languages make asking for information easier. For the MATLAB user, the promise of fourth-generation languages means being able to work with collections of data, rather than individual bits and bytes, making it easier for you to focus on the task, instead of the language.

As languages progress from first generation to fourth generation (and beyond), they become more like human language. For example, you might write something like FIND ALL RECORDS WHERE LAST_NAME EQUALS ‘SMITH’. It’s not quite human language, but close enough that most people can follow it. You tell the computer what to do, but the computer actually decides how to do it. Such languages are useful because they take the burden of interacting with the computer hardware off the language user and place it on the automation that supports the language.

remember.eps MATLAB employs a fourth-generation language to make your job a lot easier. The language isn’t quite human, but it’s also a long way away from the machine code that developers used to write to make computers work. Using MATLAB makes you more efficient because the language is specifically designed to meet the needs of STEM users (just as SQL is designed to meet the needs of database administrators and developers who need to access large databases).

Discovering Who Uses MATLAB for Real-World Tasks

An application isn’t very useful if you can’t perform real-world tasks with it. Many applications out there are curiosities — they may do something interesting, but they aren’t really practical. MATLAB is popular among STEM users whose main goal is productively solving problems in their particular field — not problems unique to computer programming. You can find MATLAB used in these kinds of professions:

Scientists

Engineers

Mathematicians

Students

Teachers

Professors

Statisticians

Control technology

Image-processing researchers

Simulation users

Of course, most people want to hear about actual users who are employing the product to do something useful. You can find such a list at http://www.mathworks.com/company/user_stories/product.html. Just click the MATLAB entry to see a list of companies that use MATLAB to perform real-world tasks. For example, this list tells you that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) uses MATLAB for polio virus sequencing (see http://www.mathworks.com/company/user_stories/Centers-for-Disease-Control-and-Prevention-Automates-Poliovirus-Sequencing-and-Tracking.html). You also find that the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) used MATLAB when creating the model for the X-43 — the craft that recently achieved mach 10 (read about it at http://www.mathworks.com/company/user_stories/NASAs-X-43A-Scramjet-Achieves-Record-Breaking-Mach-10-Speed-Using-Model-Based-Design.html). The list of companies goes on and on. Yes, MATLAB really is used for important tasks by a large number of companies.

Knowing How to Get the Most from MATLAB

At this point, you may have decided that you absolutely can’t get by without obtaining your own personal copy of MATLAB. If that’s the case, you really do need to know a little more about it in order to get the most value for your money. The following sections provide a brief overview of the skills that are helpful when working with MATLAB. You don’t need these skills to perform every task, but they all come in handy for reducing the overall learning curve and making your MATLAB usage experience nicer.

Getting the basic computer skills

Most complex applications require that you have basic computer skills, such as knowing how to use your mouse, work with menu systems, understand what a dialog box is all about, and perform some basic configuration tasks. MATLAB works like other computer programs you own. It has an intuitive and conventional Graphical User Interface (GUI) that makes using MATLAB a lot easier than employing pad and pen. If you’ve learned to use a GUI operating system such as Windows or the Mac OS X, and you also know how to use an application such as Word or Excel, you’ll be fine.

tip.eps This book points out MATLAB peculiarities. In addition, you have access to procedures that you can use to make your tasks easier to perform. The combination of these materials will make it easier for you to work with MATLAB even if your computer skills aren’t as finely honed as they could be. The important thing to remember is that you can’t break anything when working with MATLAB. In fact, we encourage trial and error because it’s a great learning tool. If you find that an example doesn’t quite work as anticipated, close MATLAB, reopen it, and start the example over again. MATLAB and your computer are both more forgiving than others may have led you to believe.

Defining the math requirements

You need to have the right level of knowledge to use MATLAB. Just as using SQL is nearly impossible without a knowledge of database management, using MATLAB is hard without the proper math knowledge. MATLAB’s benefits become evident when applied to trigonometry, exponentials, logarithms, and higher math.

tip.eps This book assumes that you have a certain level of math knowledge. The math behind the exercises isn’t explained to any large degree unless the explanation helps you understand the MATLAB programming language better. However, many sites online cater to math knowledge. For example, you can find a host of tutorials at http://www.analyzemath.com/. These tutorials come complete with exercises that help you understand the math behind the MATLAB examples in this book.

Applying what you know about other procedural languages

One of the more significant problems in understanding how to use any language is the procedure. The point was driven home to one fellow at an early age when his teacher assigned his class the task of writing a procedure for making toast. Every student carefully developed a procedure for making toast, and on the day the papers were turned in, the teacher turned up with a loaf of bread and a toaster. She dutifully followed the instructions each child provided to the letter. All the children failed at the same point. Yes, they forgot to take the bread out of the wrapper. You can imagine what it was like trying to shove a single piece of bread into the toaster when the piece was still in the wrapper along with the rest of the bread.

Programming can be (at times) just like the experiment with the toast. The computer takes you at your word and follows to the letter the instructions you provide. The results may be not what you expected, but the computer always follows the same logical course. Having previous knowledge of a procedural language, such as C, Java, C++, or Python, will help you understand how to write MATLAB procedures as well. You have already developed the skill required to break instructions into small pieces and know what to do when a particular piece is missing. Yes, you can use this book without any prior programming experience, but the prior experience will most definitely help you get through the chapters must faster and with fewer errors.

Understanding how this book will help you

This is a For Dummies book, so it takes you by the hand to explore MATLAB and make it as easy to understand as possible. The goal of this book is to help you use MATLAB to perform at least simple feats of mathematical magic. It won’t make you a mathematician and it won’t help you become a developer — those are topics for other books. When you finish this book, you will know how to use MATLAB to explore STEM-related topics.

tip.eps Make sure that you also check out the blog for this book at http://blog.johnmuellerbooks.com/categories/263/matlab-for-dummies.aspx. This is the place to look for updates and additional information. Also, the blog offers answers to commonly asked questions — questions asked by people just like you. You can also write the authors: John ([email protected]) and Jim ([email protected]) with your book-related questions. We want to ensure that you have a great reading experience and can get everything possible from this book.

Getting Over the Learning Curve

Even easy programming languages have a learning curve. If nothing else, you need to discover the techniques that developers use to break tasks into small pieces, ensure that all the pieces are actually there, and then place the pieces in a logical order. Creating an orderly flow of steps that the computer can follow can be difficult, but this book leads you through the process a step at a time.

To help you understand MATLAB, this book compares how to accomplish a task in MATLAB with something you’re used to, such as a spreadsheet or calculator. You learn by doing. Try the examples in this book and invent some of your own. Try variations and experiment. MATLAB’s not too tough — you, too, can discover how to use MATLAB.

Chapter 2

Starting Your Copy of MATLAB

In This Chapter

arrow Obtaining and installing your copy of MATLAB

arrow Starting MATLAB and working with the interface

Before you can use MATLAB to do anything productive, you need a copy of it installed on your system. Fortunately, you can obtain a free trial version that lasts 30 days. If you’re diligent, you can easily complete this book in that time and know for certain whether you want to continue using MATLAB as a productivity aid. The point is that you need a good installation, and this book helps you obtain that goal.

tip.eps After you have MATLAB installed, it’s important to introduce yourself to the interface. This chapter provides you with an overview of the interface, not a detailed look at every feature. However, overviews are really important because working with lower-level interface elements is hard if you don’t have the big picture. You may actually want to mark this chapter in some way so that you can refer back to the interface information.

Installing MATLAB

A problem that anyone can encounter is getting a bad product installation or simply not having the right software installed. When you can’t use your software properly, the entire application experience is less than it should be. The following sections guide you through the MATLAB installation so that you can have a great experience using it.

Discovering which platforms MATLAB supports

Before you go any further, you need to verify that your system will actually run MATLAB. At a minimum, you need 3GB of free hard drive space and 2GB of RAM to use MATLAB effectively. (It can run on systems with fewer resources, but you won’t be happy with the performance.) You also need to know which platforms MATLAB supports. You can use it on these systems:

Windows (3GB free disk space, 2GB RAM)

Windows 8.1

Windows 8

Windows 7 Service Pack 1

Windows Vista Service Pack 2

Windows XP Service Pack 3

Windows XP x64 Edition Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2012

Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2

Windows Server 2003 R2 Service Pack 2

Mac OS X

Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)

Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

Mac OS X 10.7.4+ (Lion)

Linux

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, 13.04, and 13.10

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.x

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 SP3

Debian 6.x

tip.eps Linux users may find that other distributions work. However, the list of Linux systems represents those that are tested to work with MATLAB. If you try MATLAB on your unlisted Linux system and find that it works well, please let John know (at [email protected]) and he’ll mention these other systems in a blog post. The point is that you really do need to have the right platform to get good results with MATLAB. You can always obtain the current minimum requirements for MATLAB at http://www.mathworks.com/support/sysreq/current_release/index.html.

Getting your copy of MATLAB

Before you can work with MATLAB, you need a copy installed on your system. Fortunately, you have a number of methods at your disposal. Here are the three most common ways of getting MATLAB:

Get the trial version from https://www.mathworks.com/programs/trials/trial_request.html.

Obtain a student version of the product from https://www.mathworks.com/academia/student_version/.

Buy a copy from http://www.mathworks.com/pricing-licensing/index.html.

In most cases, you need to download the copy of MATLAB or the MATLAB installer onto your system after you fill out the required information to get it. Some users choose to receive a DVD in the mail instead of downloading the product online. No matter which technique you use, you eventually get a copy of MATLAB to install.

Performing the installation

The method you use to install MATLAB depends on the version you obtain and the media used to send it to you. For example, there is a method for installing MATLAB from DVD and an entirely different method when you want to download the installer and use an Internet connection. Administrators and users also have different installation procedures. Use the table at http://www.mathworks.com/help/install/ug/choose-installation-procedure.html to determine which installation procedure to use.

tip.eps MathWorks provides you with substantial help in performing the installation. Before you contact anyone, be sure to look through the materials on the main installation page at http://www.mathworks.com/help/install/index.html. It’s also possible to obtain installation help at http://www.mathworks.com/support/install-matlab.html. Take the time to review the material that MathWorks provides before you push the panic button. Doing so will save time and effort.

Activating the product

After you complete the MATLAB installation, you must activate the product. Activation is a verification process. It simply means that MathWorks verifies that you have a valid copy of MATLAB on your system. With a valid copy, you obtain support such as updates to your copy of MATLAB as needed.

As with installation, you have a number of activation types to use with MATLAB that depend on the product version and how you’re using the product. The chart at http://www.mathworks.com/help/install/license/activation-types.html tells you about these activation types and helps you make a selection. The matrix at http://www.mathworks.com/help/install/license/license-option-and-activation-type-matrix.html tells you whether your particular version of MATLAB supports a specific activation type. For example, the individual license doesn’t support the Network Named User activation type.

remember.eps MATLAB automatically asks you about activation after the installation process is complete. You don’t need to do anything special. However, you do want to consider the type of activation you want to perform — which type of activation will best meet your needs and those of your organization.

Meeting the MATLAB Interface

Most applications have similar interface functionality. For example, if you click a button, you expect something to happen. The button usually contains text that tells you what will happen when you click it, such as closing a dialog box by clicking OK or Cancel. However, the similarities aren’t usually enough to tell you everything you need to know about the interface. The following sections provide an overview of the MATLAB interface so that you can work through the chapters that follow with greater ease. These sections don’t tell you everything about the interface, but you do get enough information to feel comfortable using MATLAB.

Starting MATLAB for the first time

When you start MATLAB for the first time (after you activate it), you see a display containing a series of blank windows. It’s not all that interesting just yet because you haven’t done anything with MATLAB. However, each of the windows has a special purpose, so it’s important to know which window to use when you want to perform a task.

It’s possible to arrange the windows in any order needed. Figure 2-1 shows the window arrangement used throughout the book, which may not precisely match your display. The Changing the MATLAB layout section of this chapter tells you how to rearrange the windows so that you can see them the way that works best when you work. Here is a brief summary of the window functionality.

Home tab: The Home tab of the Ribbon interface (a bar that provides access to various MATLAB features, such as creating a new script or importing data) is where you find most of the icons you use to create and use MATLAB formulas. It’s the tab you use most often. Also on the interface is a Plots