| | |  | Software Engineering | Home » » » MATLAB Demystified | | | | | | | Product Promotions: | | | | | Description: | | Need to Learn MATLAB? Problem SOLVED! Get started using MATLAB right away with help from this hands-on guide. MATLAB Demystified offers an effective and enlightening method for learning how to get the most out this powerful computational mathematics tool. Using an easy-to-follow format, this book explains the basics of MATLAB up front. You'll find out how to plot functions, solve algebraic equations, and compute integrals. You'll also learn how to solve differential equations, generate numerical solutions of ODEs, and work with special functions. Packed with hundreds of sample equations and explained solutions, and featuring end-of-chapter quizzes and a final exam, this book will teach you MATLAB essentials in no time at all. - This self-teaching guide offers:
- The quickest way to get up and running on MATLAB
- Hundreds of worked examples with solutions
- Coverage of MATLAB 7
- A quiz at the end of each chapter to reinforce learning and pinpoint weaknesses
- A final exam at the end of the book
- A time-saving approach to performing better on homework or on the job
Simple enough for a beginner, but challenging enough for an advanced user, MATLAB Demystified is your shortcut to computational precision. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| David McMahon | | Paperback:
| 336 pages | | Publisher:
| McGraw-Hill Professional | | Publication Date:
| April 06, 2007 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0071485511 | | Product Length:
| 9.2 inches | | Product Width:
| 7.36 inches | | Product Height:
| 0.71 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.05 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.1 inches | | Package Width:
| 7.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.8 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.45 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 11 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 11 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 found the following review helpful:
 OK introduction to Matlab but plagued by typos and other problemsMay 28, 2007
By Richard Lewis
Overall this book is a reasonable introduction to Matlab 7.x but it tends to drag in places and seem rushed in others. Also, there are enough typographical errors in the examples to make it difficult to arrive at the expected results especially if one is a beginner. For example, the solution to one of the quiz questions in chapter 5 requires the use of the "eval" function which was never introduced in the book.
Oddly one of the most powerful features of Matlab, programming, is pasted onto the end of the statistics chapter as a brief introduction whereas it should have it's own chapter and covered in a lot more detail. Also, there are chapters on transforms and curve fitting but strangely no mention of time series.
Lastly, quizzes at the end of each chapter often leave out key material introduced in that chapter. Also, the final exam at the end of the book leaves out half of the later chapters.
This is an OK book if you want to master the basics of Matlab quickly but on it's own it's not enough. I would recommend the much better Getting Started with MATLAB 7: A Quick Introduction for Scientists and Engineers instead.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Book better suited for Student Edition of MatlabNov 11, 2007
By Howard R. Hansen
First three chapters, The MATLAB Environment, Vectors and Matrices and Plotting and Graphics, provide a good introduction to Matlab. However, author does not mention that the Symbolic Toolbox is required to work the examples in Chapter 5, Solving Algebraic Equations and other Symbolic Tools, Chapter 6. Basic Symbolic Calculus and Differential Equations, Chapter 8 Integration, and Chapter 9 Transforms. It appears the author assumed the only persons who would buy the book were college students who bought the Student edition of Matlab. Persons who only have access to the commercial version of Matlab will not be able to work the examples in Chapters 5, 6, 8, and 9.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 Only decent content, poor editingSep 03, 2009
By John in Seattle
Another review pointed out the poor editing with this book. For instance, chapter 2 includes a phrase "we have seen how to create a row vector ... using the linspace command" but no reference to the linspace command is ever made. The text also references another MATLAB book, but does not call it out. It almost make me think this is a stripped down text of a larger work, but that is supposition on my part.
The text in the examples is sometimes wrong (y=x^2 will not often work - you need to type y=x.^2) although the book will eventually point out how to enter the correct syntax. I wish it would do this before showing the wrong text to type, though.
All in all, this book is not worth the time needed to detangle it. It is incomplete and needs a new editing pass to make it worthwhile.
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Complete, simple and objectiveAug 30, 2008
By Bernardo S. Da Fh
"Horus"
If we could classify books intended to teach software in two categories- those focused on the tricks of the latest version and those ones centered in the contextualized applications - MATLAB Demystified would belong to the first class of books. A nice "direct to the point" approach on how to model, code and simulate real life situations. Accessible for all people interested in programming computers easily.
So-SoMar 22, 2011
By E. Lofgren
MATLAB DeMystified is a decent enough introduction to the MATLAB language, a decent jumping off block for beginners getting their feel for the language. There are a few things though that plague it:
1. Editing. Chapter references in wrong places, code and the equations based on that code not matching, etc. I know it's hard for a book to be perfect, but for people just starting out, that can be really disorienting. "Is that a typo, or am I not understanding something?"
2. The book relies entirely on manually entering data as vectors or matrices - it would have been preferable to cover, at least somewhat, importing data. Rarely will a student who is using this book be typing the data in by hand - it's error prone, and largely confines the examples in the book to either functions that can be written, or "toy" examples with very small amounts of data.
3. Editing. Seriously, it's bad.
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