ABSTRACT
This chapter is intended to familiarize the beginning user of MATLAB with its basic features. The official MATLAB website is also very useful in exploring the capabilities of MATLAB. Matrix and vector calculations are an intrinsic part of MATLAB. Defining variables in MATLAB is based on the “array structure.” MATLAB has really powerful tools for matrix calculations. Basic reading and writing of data can be done with the MATLAB load and save functions. Sometimes one need to repeat calculation steps frequently with different input data, or one would like to use results of previous calculations for new calculations. Such calculations are called repetitive operations or iterations. In MATLAB, one can do iterations in two ways, with the so-called “for-loop” and the “while-loop.” MATLAB also uses the while-loop. In a while-loop, an operation is repeated until a certain end criterion is reached.
