Matlab: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving [Paperback]

In the case of this product, there is truth in advertising. The book itself assumes no knowledge of MATLAB with almost no math beyond some basic high school math. The book was developed for incoming freshman at Boston University by a longtime educational coordinator.

The author put considerable work into this book, and for someone who wants to learn MATLAB on their own, this is a pretty good choice. The examples are simple and easy to follow with the content suitable even for aggressive high school students. Matlab no longer needs any sort of hyping, it is used in many disciplines ranging from engineering to economics to education, although engineers are the true power users.

As an experienced user, I most likely to use this book as a reference when I simply forget one of the many Matlab constructs. As a reference, the material is quite extensive and diverse but still does not get too aggressive in any of the content.

In a nutshell, the book will
1. Get you familiar with the MATLAB command set
2. Get you familiar with the MATLAB user interface
3. Teach you how to import data, manipulate the data based on the baseline MATLAB instruction set, and generate decent but often clunky looking plots (many people that I know will often port the data out to a better plotting package such as excel)
4. Develop a collection of commands (call .m files) that perform an extended sequence of commands and can be run from session to session

The MATLAB program is not included in the book and can be quite costly, so if you don't have a copy of MATLAB, you might want to check out its affordability first. Also, there is no companion disk with the book meaning that you have to do all the typing of the examples in the book. This is more of a luxury than a necessity (in my opinion).

Why only 4 stars?
Quite honestly, the book was a bit too basic for me. The book did not deal with one very important subject which is interfacing with .C programs. This has become commonplace in the workforce and although it doesn't fit nicely with an intro book, some material should have been included on this important subject. In addition, some of the examples were almost too simplistic resulting in cases where nothing really significant is shown. Plotting for the most part was kept to a basic level and as a result, most of the plots in the book look basic. These are points that are worth downgrading the book one star, but not enough to really detract from its overall appeal as an introductory or good reference book. If you're looking for a book that is either a good introduction with no assumed prior knowledge or simply a basic reference, this book is highly recommended.

MATLAB is one of the most advanced mathematical and computational software environments that are currently available. In my line of work I have primarily used Mathematica, which is a bit better suited for symbolic manipulation rather than numerical and statistical analysis and modeling. Recently I've ventured into some numerical work, and have decided to learn how to use MATLAB. In that regard I am happy to report that Stormy Attaway's "MATLAB - A Practical Introduction To Programming And Problem Solving" is an excellent pedagogical resource.

Some of the overarching features of this book are:

* Hybrid approach that combines both the programming techniques as well as the exposition of MATLAB's own functions.
* Systematic, step-by-step approach building concepts throughout the book.
* Exposition of MATLAB's ability to work with large and complex files and other inputs.
* Introduction of some advanced programming concepts, such as string manipulation, data structures, recursion, anonymous functions, sorting, searching, and indexing.
* The book also has a short introduction to several key mathematical and problem-solving concepts, such as statistical functions, sets of linear algebraic equations, the use of complex numbers, and some calculus.

Some pedagogical features:

* Quick Question! - questions that are posed throughout the book and immediately answered.
* Practice problems are given throughout the chapter
* Introduced problems are solved using both The Programming Concept and The Efficient Method.

The book comes with a companion website that makes available several MATLAB files and programs which can be used to solve the problems throughout the book. The faculty also have the access to additional course material, including solutions manual, electronic figures from the text, and downloadable files for all examples in the text.

Each chapter starts with a list of key-terms. They can be a useful bare-bones guide to the content of each chapter, as well as a study reference. The presentation of the material is very pedagogical and it was clearly written with the aim of guiding the students and helping them absorb the information as painlessly as possible. The chapters end with a series of exercises. These can be used for homework or further study and reinforcement of the material. The exercises vary in difficulty, from the straightforward application of the already worked-out problems in the text, to the more challenging programming assignments. Some of the latter could serve as a basis for a term project.

This book makes a great textbook for a wide variety of introductory computational classes. It can be used in engineering, statistics, and sciences, as well as for more mathematically advanced modeling in other disciplines. As I've come to discover, this book can also be used for self-study, especially if you are already familiar with most of the mathematical and programming concepts.

First a disclaimer: I chose to receive this textbook to review from the Vine program, meaning I got it for free. I am an Electrical Engineer and I like to have references for the different languages I use at work...not having one for MATLAB, I thought this would be nice to try.

Here's my review:

This book is exactly what it claims to be: an introduction to MATLAB. All in all, it appears to be a very well written textbook (I already know MATLAB so I can't say I tried learning with this book, but I did browse through it and read some sections in detail and it was a very good reminder and seemed easy to follow and understand).

The book does a fantastic job of describing the different functions and terms it covers. It also is filled with useful smatterings of actual MATLAB syntax and code including at times alternate methods for achieving the same output. Code examples are good and text explaining them are very easy to read and follow. Well written for what is essentially a programming book!

The table of contents is well organized and descriptive, making it easy to skip around the book looking for specific topics. Index is decent...could stand a tad more detail, but acceptable.

The preface makes a good point - the book seeks to explain both the use of functions and the programming concepts. I can't say it's completely unique to approach MATLAB this way, but it is, in my mind, the preferable way to do it. Using functions alone doesn't leave you much flexibility when you are faced with something more complex and need to actually write useful programs or something not directly correlating to a function. But not knowing the functions really cripples your productivity.

The book also touches briefly on some of the more advanced concepts in MATLAB (even 3D plots, animation, sound and image processing). Not enough to really use these super effectively without another reference, but enough to try at least simple versions and to know that it exists as an option, which for an intro book is quite acceptable and nice that it bothers at all.

I do like the practice features in the text - most of them basically have you pen and paper what you think the output of things will be and then go into MATLAB to check your answers. It seems a little trivial to have to be solving math equations by hand until you realize it's a great way to make sure that you both understand the math and the MATLAB. If they don't agree you did one or the other wrong! I liked this idea quite a lot for both students and myself : Good review of both language and math.

As for the problems in the text, reading them, they seem useful. Some are very easy seeeming and some really do require you to think (the later chapters basically make you write a complete program). I didn't try them honestly, but at least they are clear - I don't have too many questions understanding what they want which is very good for a textbook. Without an answer manual, these aren't as useful to me though since I could do the problem, but not really check my work unless I did it by hand as well (which is why I think the set-up/suggestion in the book for how to do the practice problems is so great).

I did knock it down to four stars for a few things though that made it a little less useful as a reference in my mind (and in my mind any good textbook should be judged this way...even if you buy it for class, you want to be able to turn to it years later as a reference).

First - I understand MATLAB has a VERY good help feature that explains almost any function. But that's only really helpful if you know to bother looking for the function in the first place. One of the most useful things any programming book can have for me is a library/list of all the functions with a brief explanation of any variables. Then when I'm programming I can scan the list looking for, say, anything with "matrix" in it if I know I'm going to be using matrixes. Sometimes just seeing the name of a function is really useful to me to let me know that "hey, the language has a function for this!"

This book doesn't have that. A great deal of the functions are described in the text, but there is no list that I've found in it. If you find one, point it out to me in a comment please, but flipping through it, if there is one I totally overlooked it). In some of the sections, additional functions are mentioned beyond those that are explicitly explained, which is good, but the variables and syntax are not explained which is also too bad...although with MATLAB's help I could figure it out if I need to.

Second - In my courses (I have a Master's in Robotic Controls) I had to use a lot of toolboxes and do in work as well. Toolboxes are basically the MATLAB version of additional software add-ons (kind of like libraries in other languages) which give you additional functions you can call. The basic student edition of MATLAB software doesn't come with any toolboxes (at least it didn't used to) and toolboxes are expensive, but I still find it quite unfortunate that I couldn't find any mention of toolboxes in this book. It would be really nice to get a list of the toolboxes available for MATLAB and a brief description of what each covers (a paragraph or two). In my mind an intro book is a great place to put info like this...it tells you were to turn next if you need to head off in some more detailed direction after you grab the basics.

I'll update the review if I discover more...at this point the reading is as described - looking at the index and table of contents, browse of most most of it, and in depth reading of a few sections (notably the preface, "is" functions, scripts, loops, advanced tops, maxix representation, and sound and image processing)