Today we're going to talk about, what is
matlab, how do you get it,
various add-ons and toolboxes you can
purchase to extend the abilities of
matlab, and generally how how you can get
help using matlab. So the first thing I'm
going to show you is just I'm going to
Google matlab, and right at the top you
see matlab's official website. So that's
where you can go to get matlab and learn
a little bit more about it just by
reading on your own. To give you a short
introduction though, matlab stands for
matrix laboratory. So if you've ever
programmed before it's a little bit
different because matlab is mostly for
math and all the variables are matrices,
even scalars are matrices. Matlab is
usually used in academia and research so
if you're taking a university course
which involves numerical computing
you'll probably use matlab. If you're
doing research and you're analyzing data
your professor probably already uses
matlab and everyone in your lab as a
result will be using matlab. Matlab is
used in fields of engineering, science,
finance, and economics. At its simplest
matlab basically does calculations so
it's like a it's a very fancy calculator.
On top of that though, you can write code
to evaluate a complicated formula, you
can plot equations and data, and you can
implement algorithms.
Ok, so let's talk about getting matlab.
So I've already opened the website, if
you
scroll down to the bottom, or near the
bottom, you can see a section called try
or buy. So you can try matlab for free
probably a trial that lasts 30 days...
let's check. It doesn't say you have to
enter your email but it's a
limited time trial so it won't last
forever. If you want to buy matlab there
are several options. So the standard
matlab you probably don't want to use
its over $2,000, and if
you're part of an educational
institution you can use the education
tab and get matlab for $500,
the home version is just for
personal use
that's a $149,
and the student version is $49
so you probably have to go
through some process to prove that you're
student. Another way that you can
probably get matlab is if you are a
student at a university there are
options that the university has for you
to get matlab, so you have to consult
with your University's resources such as
the website or the bookstore to see if
you can possibly even get it for free.
For this tutorial I'm going to be using
the 201 a version of matlab. So one
thing you'll notice is for the home
version and the student version is they
have these add-on products that you can
get for a price.
So add-ons are also called toolboxes and
they have functionality and code that
can be useful for you
in your specific field of work. So, for
example, if you do
bioinformatics you may want to purchase
the bioinformatics toolbox. So you can
click on the links and get an idea of
what's included in the packages,
maybe you do bioinformatics and you
don't really even need the functions
that the tool box comes with, so you
might not want to purchase it. But, in
general you can browse the documentation
for free so you can see everything that
you would get if you did purchase the
toolbox.
It's essentially an API, so you can look
at any function see what the input and
the output is and decide if that's
useful for you.
The next thing I want to talk about is
how to get help with matlab. So you're
already taking this course and you're
going to learn a lot about matlab here,
and when you start coding they're
probably going to be some very specific
things you want to do that you don't
know how to do yet. So one place you can
go I clicked on the community tab on the
matlab website and so you can see there
is a a community of people who use
matlab who post on this site. The file
exchange I've used before people post
useful functions and code that you know
you may need in your projects that can
be useful.
There's also a section called matlab
answers where people ask questions and
you can answer them or you can ask a
question and someone else can answer you.
Personally, I would recommend just
searching your question on google
because they've already indexed all this
stuff you could potentially put your
question in the search box on the matlab
site as well though, and you might on
Google also get stackoverflow results so
it wouldn't only be matlab central which
might be helpful.