Programming with MATLAB for Scientists

A Beginner’s Introduction

Eugeniy E. Mikhailov

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781498738309
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Applied Mathematics

This book offers an introduction to the basics of MATLAB programming to scientists and engineers. The author leads with engaging examples to build a working knowledge, specifically geared to those with science and engineering backgrounds. The reader is empowered to model and simulate real systems, as well as present and analyze everyday data sets. In order to achieve those goals, the contents bypass excessive "under the hood" details, and instead gets right down to the essential, practical foundations for successful programming and modeling. Readers will benefit from the following features:

• Teaches programming to scientists and engineers using a problem-based approach, leading with illustrative and interesting examples.
• Emphasizes a hands-on approach, with "must know" information and minimal technical details.
• Utilizes examples from science and engineering to showcase the application of learned concepts on real problems.
• Showcases modeling of real systems, gradually advancing from simpler to more challenging problems.
• Highlights the practical uses of data processing and analysis in everyday life.

Part I

Computing Essentials

CHAPTER 1

Computers and Programming Languages: An Introduction

This chapter defines programming and programming languages for the reader with a summary of modern computing as a backdrop. It goes further to explain the role of numbers in computers and potential problems in their use.

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Humans beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.

Leo Cherne ¹ (1969)

1.1 Early History of Computing

It is hard to believe that only about 100 years ago, there were no computers. Computers used to be humans who were trained to do quite complex calculations using only their minds and some mechanical aids. Have a look at Figure 1.1. The painting ² depicts an ordinary school in rural Russia. It might be hard to see, but pupils are looking for the result of the following expression inscribed on the blackboard:

$$\frac{{10}^2+{11}^2+{12}^2+{13}^2+{14}^2}{365}$$

(1.1)

Figure 1.1 On the left is the painting by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky, dated 1895: “ Mental Arithmetic. In the Public School of S.Rachinsky” . An enlarged portion of the blackboard is shown on the right.

There were aids: abaci, sliding rulers, pre-calculated tables of functions (logarithms, trigonometric functions, exponents, . . .), and mechanical calculators, which start to show up at the end of the nineteenth century. These mechanical aids were not programmable; they were designed to do a fixed subset of elementary calculations. Instead, you would “ program” , that is, ask to do a complex problem, a human. ³

1.2 Modern Computers

We can probably attribute the title of the very first computer, the direct ancestor of modern ones, to ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer), which was constructed in 1946. Here are some of its specifications:

• Weight: 30 tons

• Cost: $500,000 ($6,000,000 adjusted for inflation)

• Power consumption: 150 kW (averaged consumption of 500 households)

With all its might, ENIAC could do the following in 1s: 5000 additions, 357 multiplications, or 38 divisions. Modern computer speed is measured in FLOPS (the number of floating-point operations per second). So we see that ENIAC was able to do about 100 FLOPS, while the author’ s several-years-old desktop computer can do about 50 Mega FLOPS. A typical mobile phone outperforms ENIAC by many orders of magnitude.

1.2.1 Common features of a modern computer

A modern computer typically has the following features. It has one or more central processing units (CPU), memory, which holds data and programs, and input and output interfaces (keyboards, hard drives, displays, printers, . . .). A typical computer uses the binary system internally....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I Computers and Programming Languages
• Part II Solving Everyday Problems with MATLAB
• Part III Going Deeper and Expanding the Scientist’s Toolbox
• References
• Index