MATLAB® is a high-level technical computing language and interactive environment for algorithm development, data visualization, data analysis, and numerical computation.
Obtaining Matlab
The University now has a site license for Matlab that allows students to install Matlab and a wide variety of toolboxes for the duration of their enrolment.
Toolboxes
Toolboxes are add-on packages that provide additional functionality to Matlab. There are a number of commercial toolboxes that are distributed by Mathworks, the makers of matlab. There are also many freely available toolboxes, including
- m_map: tools for geographic mapping and projection.
- snctools: reading and writing netCDF files.
- matlabRlink: communicate with R through COM.
- FATHOM: multivariate ecological & oceanographic data analysis.
- export_fig: Create publication-quality figures in various formats.
Matlab Central
Matlab Central is a site dedicated to all things matlab, maintained by MathWorks, the makers of matlab. At Matlab Central you can find answers to frequently asked questions, newsgroups and blogs all pertaining to Matlab. Of particular interest is the Matlab File Exchange – a repository of matlab scripts and packages for a huge variety of tasks.
Books and Tutorials
There are a huge number of articles and tutorials on the web devoted to Matlab. Some of the more interesting are:
- Numerical Computing with Matlab – free ebook by Cleve Moler.
- Experiments with Matlab – free ebook by Cleve Moler.
There are also numerous books with based on Matlab. Some particularly relevant titles are:
- Danaila, I., Joly, P., Kaber, S. M., & Postel, M. (2010). An Introduction to Scientific Computing: Twelve Computational Projects Solved with MATLAB. Springer.
- Grewal, M. S., & Andrews, A. P. (2008). Kalman Filtering: Theory and Practice Using MATLAB. Wiley-IEEE Press.
- Martinez, W. L., Martinez, A., & Solka, J. (2010). Exploratory Data Analysis with MATLAB. CRC Press.
- Trauth, M. H. (2010). MATLAB® Recipes for Earth Sciences. Springer.