The best way to learn MATLAB is by trying it yourself, and hence we begin with a whirlwind tour. Working through the examples below will give you a quick feel for the way that MATLAB operates and an appreciation of its power and flexibility.

The tutorial is entirely independent of the rest of the book all the MATLAB features introduced are discussed in greater detail in the subsequent chapters. Indeed, in order to keep this chapter brief, we have not explained all the functions used here. You can use the index to find out more about particular topics that interest you.

The tutorial contains commands for you to type at the command line. In the last part of the tutorial we give examples of script and function files MATLAB's versions of programs and functions, subroutines, or procedures in other languages. These files are short, so you can type them in quickly. Alternatively, you can download them from the Web site mentioned in the preface on p. xxi. You should experiment as you proceed, keeping the following points in mind.

• Upper and lower case characters are not equivalent (MATLAB is case sensitive).

• Typing the name of a variable will cause MATLAB to display its current value.

• A semicolon at the end of a command suppresses the screen output.

• MATLAB uses both parentheses, (), and square brackets, [], and these are not interchangeable.

• The up arrow and down arrow keys can be used to scroll through your previous commands. Also, an old...