i fucking LOVE MATLAB

that program ROCKS SO HARD.

i've used it alot in school, but (most awesomely) got to use matlab to help model and study disruption of social networks. man that was an awesome research project

fuck yeah <3 matlab

Myrmidon

United States9452 Posts

September 27 2008 12:46 GMT

#22

Yeah I use MATLAB for some large data manipulation, analysis, and graphing features. Then also for helping me with math-related coursework in the form of doing matrix manipulations (obviously) and then solving equations, symbolic forward and inverse transforms, etc. All in all it's been very useful.

KOFgokuon

United States14899 Posts

September 27 2008 13:25 GMT

#23

define expert
i've had to do some linear programming and stochastic simulations with matlab for class

Mortality

United States4790 Posts

September 27 2008 13:29 GMT

#24

I used to use MATLAB a lot. (These days, the stuff I work on requires pencil and paper only.)

If I were to give one piece of advice... MATLAB thinks of everything as a matrix. You might look at the name of the program and go "Oh, well, duh!" If you've worked with the program for even 10 seconds, you really ought to know that already. But, the reason I bring that up is that it can be something easy to forget; even a result that is just a number gets stored as a 1-by-1 matrix. If you're not careful, this can cause problems for you, especially if you're trying to observe a system that is non-linear. (In these cases, mathematicians will often try to break down the system and study linear elements in an effort to better understand what's going on.)

To be honest, if you're doing graphing, Mathematica is a million times better, and if all you care about is solving differential equations, I'd go with Maple (which, interestingly enough, can also do proofs on its own -- the proof of the Four Color Theorem was done with Maple).

But for engineering applications and a lot of experimental physics, I like MATLAB the best.

Chill

Calgary25989 Posts

September 27 2008 15:02 GMT

#25

I fucking hate MATLAB, the syntax was not intuitive to me at all, hence I struggled with it in university and often had to use the help just to write a simple function. It's useful if you learn it properly, but I've completely forgot everything.

SK.Testie

Canada11084 Posts

September 27 2008 15:21 GMT

#26

Oh man
This thread just solved such a mystery for me
If you read this, fuck you L!
loool

Meta

United States6225 Posts

September 27 2008 15:38 GMT

#27

I'm going to be doing a Lab for differential equations/linear algebra today and we're going to be using MATLAB. It's been almost 4 months since I've even touched it so we'll see how it goes.

micronesia

United States24741 Posts

September 27 2008 15:51 GMT

#28

Matlab is very powerful. I had to use it for several undergraduate math classes. The professor added to the book list a small book on mathematics for _____ (insert math course name). That, along with the help files and my equivalent programming 101 experience was enough to get me through it as long as I compared notes with other students every week.

Mathematica is very nice if somebody else builds the notebook for you, and you just plug the data from your experiment in :3 (Very nice professor)

Never used maple.

AoN.DimSum

United States2983 Posts

September 27 2008 16:16 GMT

#29

you are from rutgers engineering right? I took that course last semester
its a really easy class
if you want practice tests which is exactly like the exam, msg me (well the practice tests which i got from a friend were the same as the real test)

clazziquai

6685 Posts

September 27 2008 18:21 GMT

#30

On September 28 2008 01:16 AoN.DimSum wrote:
you are from rutgers engineering right? I took that course last semester
its a really easy class
if you want practice tests which is exactly like the exam, msg me (well the practice tests which i got from a friend were the same as the real test)

Yeah
But it got a lot harder man.

We have projects now...and work to submit.
At least I heard that we didn't have that lsat year? haha

AoN.DimSum

United States2983 Posts

September 27 2008 18:32 GMT

#31

oh that sucks, i cant help you there.

clazziquai

6685 Posts

September 27 2008 18:42 GMT

#32

On September 28 2008 03:32 AoN.DimSum wrote:
oh that sucks, i cant help you there.

Yeah this sucks lol......=[

Chromyne

Canada561 Posts

September 27 2008 19:04 GMT

#33

I took a introductory course in first year. I also used it along with Simulink for my summer job. It's really useful program for performing certain tasks, and it shouldn't be too difficult to learn.

Not sure what the actual purpose of this thread is though...

Vivi57

United States6599 Posts

September 27 2008 19:09 GMT

#34

Never used it, but starting tuesday, I'll need to learn it for classes.

IntoTheWow

is awesome32277 Posts

September 27 2008 19:12 GMT

#35

<- MatLab hater.

clazziquai

6685 Posts

September 27 2008 19:32 GMT

#36

On September 28 2008 04:12 IntoTheWow wrote:
<- MatLab hater.

So far I hate it so much.
Anyways guys can anyone help me with the "for loops"?

Because our teacher never explained us in lecture yet he expects us to do this for our project...lol

Begin by running the command:
[c2 d2] = xlsread('civil1.xls')
Task 1) Save (in the variable c) the matrix containing all of the rows, and only the first, fourth, and
fifth columns of c2
Task 2) Save (in the variable d) the matrix containing all of the rows, but only the second and
third columns of d2
Now, the first column of c contains the length of the road segment analyzed, the second column
contains the year the measurements were taken, and the third column contains the AADT
(essentially the average number of cars per day that pass through that section of road).
The first column of d contains where that section of road started, and the second column contains
where that section of road ended.
Task 3) Print a statement along the lines of "The busiest road in Yates County is the 6.32 mile
road that goes from Busch Campus to College Ave."
Of course, use the max function to find this information and then the fprintf function to display the
info. If there is a tie for the busiest road, you must print out this statement for each of the roads.
Round the length of the road to 1 decimal place.
Task 4) Repeat Task 3, but for the least busy road.

These are my commands so far.

[c2 d2] = xlsread('civil1.xls')
task 1
c = [c2(:,1) c2(:,4) c2(:,5)]
task 2
d=[d2(:,2) d2(:,3)]

for task 3 so far...
x=max(c(:,3))
y=find(c(:,3)==x)

So I basically found out that in x the maximum value is 12373 or something and I found out where these maximum values are, with y, and it is in the 12th and 19th spot.

I heard that have to use for loops for this part.
What would I do?

micronesia

United States24741 Posts

September 27 2008 20:06 GMT

#37

I don't care about your assignment personally but I'll explain for loops.

A for loop is used in all types of computer programming, more or less. The goal is for it to repeat a section of code over and over again a set number of times. The syntax for c++ is

for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
{
<do stuff>
}

In this case, it creates a variable i with a value of 0. It increments it by +1, and then does the stuff. Then it increments it by +1 again, and sees if i is still less than 10. If so, it does the stuff again and repeats. In this example, the stuff would be done 9 times I believe.

edit: not to be confused with a while loop:

while (x<10)
{
<do stuff>
}

In this case, the while loop will keep going until that stuff you do changes the value of x to 10 or greater.

Also a do loops is exactly like a for loop except instead of incrementing the variable at the beginning, it increments it after 'doing the stuff'. You can ignore this one if it is confusing.