This HTML version of the book is provided as a convenience, but some math equations are not translated correctly. The PDF version is more reliable.

Chapter 1 Preface

Most books that use MATLAB are aimed at readers who know how to program. This book is for people who have never programmed before.

As a result, the order of presentation is unusual. The book starts with scalar values and works up to vectors and matrices very gradually. This approach is good for beginning programmers, because it is hard to understand composite objects until you understand basic programming semantics. But there are problems:

The MATLAB documentation is written in terms of matrices, and so are the error messages. To mitigate this problem, the book explains the necessary vocabulary early and deciphers some of the messages that beginners find confusing.
Many of the examples in the first half of the book are not idiomatic MATLAB code. I address this problem in the second half by translating the examples into a more standard style.

The book puts a lot of emphasis on functions, in part because they are an important mechanism for controlling program complexity, and also because they are useful for working with MATLAB tools like fzero and ode45.

I assume that readers know calculus, differential equations, and physics, but not linear algebra. I explain the math as I go along, but the descriptions might not be enough for someone who hasn’t seen the material before.

There are small exercises within each chapter, and a few larger exercises at the end of some chapters.

If you have suggestions and corrections, please send them to downey@allendowney.com.

Allen B. Downey
Needham, MA

Contributor’s list

The following are some of the people who have contributed to this book:

Michael Lintz spotted the first (of many) typos.
Kaelyn Stadtmueller reminded me of the importance of linking verbs.
Roydan Ongie knows a matrix when he sees one (and caught a typo).
Keerthik Omanakuttan knows that acceleration is not the second derivative of acceleration.
Pietro Peterlongo pointed out that Binet’s formula is an exact expression for the nth Fibonacci number, not an approximation.
Li Tao pointed out several errors.
Steven Zhang pointed out an error and a point of confusion in Chapter 11.
Elena Oleynikova pointed out the “gotcha” that script file names can’t have spaces.
Kelsey Breseman pointed out that numbers as footnote markers can be confused with exponents, so now I am using symbols.
Philip Loh sent me some updates for recent revisions of MATLAB.
Harold Jaffe spotted a typo.
Vidie Pong pointed out the problem with spaces in filenames.
Nik Martelaro suggested using the mcode package to make the code examples look better.
Arjun Plakkat found a numerical error.
Craig Scratchley led a project to produce a significantly revised version of this book, with the help of SFU students Zhen, Zavier, Michael, and Matt (as below).
Zhen Gang Xiao synchronized MATLAB output with R2016b.
Zavier Patrick Aguila consistently numbered equations.
Michael Cline put in support for PDF bookmarks.
Matt Wiens revised several sections of the book.

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