Lab 1: Basic Decimal Matlab

This is the introduction to the Matlab programming, including how to use variable and various matrix operations.

1. Why do we clear the command window and workspace at the beginning of a script?

   To ensure the result from last session does not interference with the result of current script.

2. Why would we use variables instead of just using the numbers, which is called hard-coding?

   Using variables makes modifying the script much easier and consistent, especially when a variable has been referenced multiple times.

3. Think about what system would you personally use to organize your variables and remember what each means? Give a few examples with explanations of what they mean.

   I use two characters like xa to denote scalar variables, aa for array variables. The result of computations are named by 3-4 character names, such as sum, diff (for difference).

4. What are the benefits to using the array indexing approach?

   This helps editing a small fragment of data from a larger data set.

5. In your opinion, would the automatically generated variable ans or a user-defined variable be more useful in writing scripts?

   User-defined variables are more suitable for non-interactive sessions.

I have not used Matlab before, but I have used APL (which is also an array oriented program language with fun character set). In my opinion Matlab is a hybrid of Python and APL, but I can see it is probably also influenced by LaTeX.

I used the online version of Matlab for this assignment, but it is not intuitive to find where to download the file from the web interface. At the end I figured it can be downloaded at user account page from MathWorks.

Some Matlab expressions shown in the instructions, such as [1:10], or mb * inv(ma) would be prompted as boilerplate or inefficient. It would be good to fix them or indicate the better methods.