ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we first learn some elementary numerical techniques and the use of the fsolve
and fzero
commands from the MATLAB library to obtain the real roots (or zeros) of an arbitrary function. Then, we discuss the use of the MATLAB command
roots
for finding all roots of a polynomial. Following this, we consider the Golden Section method and the fmin
and
fmins
MATLAB commands for optimizing (finding the minimum or maximum value of a function) over an interval. Our discussions pertain exclusively to problems with one and two variables (input) and do not include the important problem of optimization with constraints.
