Physical Modeling in MATLAB
English | Size: 806 KB | PDF
Programming
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
non-standard MATLAB. I address this problem in the second half by
translating the examples into a more idiomatic style.
The book puts a lot of
emphasis on functions, in part because they are an important tool 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......
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