Introduction to MATLAB
Ben Trumbore, Brandon Barker, Nate Woody (original)
Cornell Center for Advanced Computing
Revisions: 8/2025, 8/2023, 8/2020, 3/2011 (original)
MATLAB© (short for "Matrix Laboratory") was originally created in the 1970s by Cleve Moler at the University of New Mexico.
MATLAB is a so-called "4th generation programming language", that is, a programming language designed with a *specific* purpose in mind. This is in contrast to 3rd generation programming languages (FORTRAN/C/C++) which are general purpose in nature.
Although MATLAB itself provides a great deal of basic matrix manipulation, plotting, and general purpose scientific programming capability, a large part of its functionality is actually available through specialized "toolboxes" such as the Optimization Toolbox, the Statistics Toolbox, the Signal Processing Toolbox, the Bioinformatics Toolbox, the Image Processing Toolbox, etc.
MATLAB can be run on computers from typical laptops up to the most powerful High Performance Computing (HPC) systems. HPC systems allow you to run MATLAB on many processors and with large amounts of memory.
Objectives
After you complete this topic, you should be able to:
- Understand the limitations of Octave, a free alternative to MATLAB.
- Be able to run MATLAB in either interactive or scripted mode.
- Write basic MATLAB functions, including ones that return values.
Prerequisites
- There are no prerequisites for this topic.
CVW material development is supported by NSF OAC awards 1854828, 2321040, 2323116 (UT Austin) and 2005506 (Indiana University)