Introduction

At this point, we have learned how to store and manipulate data inside of arrays. It is really important that you remember everything in Chapter 9, so it is a good idea to go back and review the previous material.

Up until this point, the power of MATLAB has been below the surface. If you recall from Chapter 9, MATLAB stands for MATrix LABoratory. In this chapter, we will learn functions and commands that make use of the most powerful MATLAB features.

To keep track of your work, it is a good idea to work on all of the examples presented in this chapter as part of a new script. I suggest creating and saving a new script called chapter9_examples.m to keep track of your work. Make little comments so you can remember what and why you are doing things.

As suggested, we will spend the majority of this chapter learning about how to manipulate arrays to perform complex mathematical operations quickly. To do so we will learn:

Quick Note- Warning on Linear Algebra

The linear algebra capabilities in MATLAB are part of what makes it powerful but because this is an introductory course, linear algebra will not be covered. The reason that I mention it here is because the linear algebra syntax is very similar to what we will learn in this section on element-by-element math operations. It is possible that you can make a tiny mistake when you are practicing problems in this section (e.g. omitting a single .) that will be hard to notice. Make sure you are being diligent!