Getting Started with MATLAB 7: A Quick Introduction for Scientists and Engineers (The Oxford Series in Electrical And Co
® Familiarizes users with MATLAB in just a few hours though self-guided lessons
® Discusses new features and applications in MATLAB 7
® Covers elementary, advanced, and special functions
® Includes numerous new examples and problems
® Supplements any course that uses MATLAB
® Works as a stand-alone tutorial and reference
MATLAB, a software package for high-performance numerical computation and visualization, is one of the most widely used tools in engineering field today. Its broad appeal lies in its interactive environment with hundreds of built-in functions for technical computation, graphics, and animation. In addition, it provides easy extensibility with its own high-level programming language. Enhanced by fun and appealing illustrations,Getting Started with MATLAB 7: A Quick Introduction for Scientists and Engineers employs a casual, accessible writing style that shows users how to enjoy using MATLAB.
Why Read This Book
You should read this book if you need a fast, practical introduction to MATLAB so you can start prototyping DSP algorithms, visualizing signals, and automating numerical experiments quickly. It gives focused, example-driven lessons that get you comfortable with MATLAB syntax, plotting, and basic numerical tools in a few hours.
Who Will Benefit
Beginners and early-career engineers or students who need a compact, hands-on MATLAB primer to support DSP, communications, or signal-analysis work.
Level: Beginner — Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with high-school level calculus and linear algebra and comfort using a desktop computer; no prior MATLAB experience required.
Key Takeaways
- Navigate the MATLAB desktop and use the command window, workspace, and editor effectively.
- Manipulate vectors and matrices to express and compute linear-algebraic operations used in DSP.
- Create scripts and functions (M-files) to structure code, reuse computations, and automate experiments.
- Produce publication-quality plots and visualizations to inspect time- and frequency-domain data.
- Apply built-in numerical functions for root finding, interpolation, basic filtering, and statistics.
- Debug and profile code to find errors and improve performance of MATLAB programs.
Topics Covered
- Introduction to MATLAB: The Desktop and Command Window
- Working with Arrays and Matrices
- Basic Math, Linear Algebra, and Element-wise Operations
- M-files: Scripts and Functions
- Flow Control: Loops and Conditional Statements
- Graphics and Data Visualization (2D and 3D plotting)
- Data Import/Export and File I/O
- Polynomials, Curve Fitting, and Interpolation
- Numerical Methods and Built-in Functions
- Debugging, Profiling and Best Programming Practices
- Advanced Topics: Handles, Anonymous Functions and Functionals
- Appendices: Useful Functions, Sample Problems, and Further Resources
Languages, Platforms & Tools
How It Compares
Compared with Attaway's 'MATLAB: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving', Pratap's book is more compact and focused on quick, hands-on lessons rather than exhaustive coverage; compared to The MathWorks' official documentation it is more tutorial-oriented and example-driven.
