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Introduction
I had my rst experience with MATLAB in my second year of engineering while working on control systems design.
Later on, in my internship, I got an opportunity to develop a package named MAD in MATLAB under Dr Shaun
A Forth at DCMT, UK. From there on, my interest in MATLAB kept on increasing. e journey thus started never
stopped and MATLAB has become an inseparable component of my research life. I have become a big fan of MATLAB
due to its simplicity and its vectorization capability. I enjoy programming in MATLAB. is book is my attempt to
make others a fan of it too.
is book presents a wide range of numerical methods and their implementation in MATLAB with the help of
examples to make the learning more interactive. A conventional method to teach numerical methods is to rst give
a detailed discussion of such methods and then present a few examples. is method is very far from being ecient
and by the time the actual implementation comes, the user who is mainly interested in solving his own problems
has already given up. is book takes a very dierent approach by stressing the concept of trying out techniques by
oneself, and attempts to start the discussion with examples long before the actual theory is introduced. e idea
behind the book came to me when I taught a course on MATLAB to a small batch of students at my home institution.
During the course, I had encountered the problems which students face while learning it. As a student and researcher
I understand what a researcher or student looks for in a book and hence I believe this book will prove to be valuable
to the intended audience. Instead of bombarding users with theory and information, the book only gives concise and
practical information to help you to eectively solve your research problem in less time.
is book presents each and every topic in a very concise and readable format which helps you to learn quickly
and eectively. is book can also serve as a complementary book for a MATLAB course in engineering colleges.
Also, it is designed to be a companion in your research anywhere you go. is book assumes that the user has a
basic knowledge of MATLAB programming and quickly covers the MATLAB basics in the rst chapter. If the user is
not familiar with MATLAB, he should read some basic MATLAB books prior to starting this book. One such book is
written by me and titled “MATLAB by Examples”, published by Finch Publications (2010).
is book is divided into 10 chapters. e rst two chapters are written to help users to quickly understand
MATLAB. Chapter 1 covers the basic programming paradigm of MATLAB, including how to write functions, scripts
and data structures. Chapter 2 quickly covers one of the most important features of MATLAB known as vectorization,
which will help you to write ecient programs in MATLAB.
e third chapter is probably the most important chapter and provides the foundation of the book. It covers
all the important operations basic to any numerical computation. Once the user is familiar with these fundamental
operations and learns how to implement them, the rest of the book should come naturally to him.
e fourth chapter provides a quick tutorial for visualizing any output and results in MATLAB using simple plots
and animations.
e fth chapter discusses the primary concepts and methodology behind any numerical simulation. It talks
about how we can solve any numerical computations using MATLAB and presents some key examples to elaborate
on the topics more clearly. Building on the fth chapter, the sixth chapter incorporates random components in any
system or simulation and introduces the idea behind Monte Carlo simulations.
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