Matlab Primer

Abstract

This chapter introduces Matlab, which is a software tool widely used and that allows for parallel processing. There are many other optional packages that can be added to Matlab for areas such as simulation of control systems, optimization, and symbolic calculus. A number of examples are given in order to develop an operational understanding of this computational tool and its capabilities and how to program in it. Examples are given on arithmetic operators, Taylor series, loops, the Newton–Raphson method, Gauss elimination, LU decomposition, and Parfor. In Matlab, the simplest way to make several computer processors work on the same problem simultaneously is via Parfor. This application is illustrated. The author in the past created computer clusters in Azure to run Matlab using parallel processing to demonstrate the possibility of such an implementation in the Cloud. Not all programs and applications are parallelizable and that is why this book presents an example of programming that uses recurrence for the computation and assembly of all combinations of a set of intervals in the application of the Interval Newton and Generalized Bisection method. A majority of engineering graduates do not study recurrence, and thus it is an excellent example to add value to the learning process in a Cloud environment.