Top key points about Matlab Software Package (1 of 2)

[Mainframe Vs Cloud Computing]

Matlab is probably the world's most successful commercial numerical analysis software package, and its name is derived from the term "matrix laboratory." It provides an interactive development tool for scientific and engineering problems and more generally for those areas where significant numeric computations have to be performed.

The package can be used to evaluate single statements directly or a list of statements called a script can be prepared. Once named and saved, a script can be executed as an entity. The package was originally based on software produced by the LINPACK and EISPACK projects but currently includes LAPACK and BLAS libraries which represent the current "state-of-the-art" numerical software for matrix computations. Matlab provides the user with

• Easy manipulation of matrix structures
• A vast number of powerful built-in routines that are constantly growing and developing
• Powerful two- and three-dimensional graphing facilities
• A scripting system that allows users to develop and modify the software for their own needs
• Collections of functions, called toolboxes, that may be added to the facilities of the core Matlab. These are designed for specific applications, for example, neural networks, optimization, digital signal processing, and higher-order spectral analysis.

It is not difficult to use Matlab, although to use it with maximum efficiency for complex tasks requires experience. Generally Matlab works with rectangular or square arrays of data (matrices), the elements of which may be real or complex. A scalar quantity is thus a matrix containing a single element. This is an elegant and powerful notion but it can present the user with an initial conceptual difficulty. A user schooled in such languages as C++ or Python is familiar with a pseudo-statement of the form A = B + C and can immediately interpret it as an instruction that A is assigned the sum of values of the numbers stored in B and C.

In Matlab the variables B and C may represent arrays so that each element of the array A will become the sum of the values of corresponding elements of B and C.