MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications Review
This book is a tutorial for engineers with no prior experience with MATLAB. The author assumes no experience with other programming languages. Although the book claims it is written with freshman engineers in mind, knowledge of calculus and some engineering experience is needed to get the most out of the book. Each chapter fully explains one aspect of MATLAB, followed by several examples of using MATLAB to solve engineering problems, and a problem set at the end of the chapter. The author explains the basic features of MATLAB clearly with a minimum of words, so that the reader can use the book later as a reference. The book is thin enough to be easily carried in a backpack with other textbooks.
Numerical or graphical answers to most even-numbered problems are given in the back of the book. This allows students to check their work without being able to "cheat". The problems often require more than just knowledge of MATLAB to solve, so students practice solving actual engineering problems instead of merely typing in formulas and numbers. Even some problems that are relatively straightforward require some thought before writing the MATLAB code. The problems really make you think about the best way to approach a problem in MATLAB. The problems contain realistic examples from physics, mathematics, and chemistry, as well as few from economics and biology, but some problems look like contrived complicated mathematical expressions with no practical use.
One problem with the book is that units and significant figures are glossed over. Many answers in the back of the book do not give the units, and are given with the number of digits that MATLAB displays rather than the number of significant digits the engineering solution should have. Sometimes the answers are numbers without a clarification of what quantity the numbers represent.
This book explains all the basics of MATLAB and doesn't waste space explaining basic engineering concepts, making this one I will carry around with me when I need to do MATLAB programming for my classes.
MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications Overview
Designed for the newest version of the popular MATLAB software program, MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications, 3/e requires no previous knowledge of computer programming. The first chapter describes basic features of the program and shows how to use it in simple arithmetic operations with scalars. The next two chapters focus on the topic of arrays (the basis of MATLAB), while the remaining text covers a wide range of other applications. Computer screens, tutorials, samples, and homework questions in math, science, and engineering, provide the student with the practical hands-on experience needed for total proficiency.
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Customer Reviews
Review of purchase - Duy H. Nguyen -
The book is good. Waiting time is short. Everything is OK. However, the transporting fee is a little high.
Practice is better than theory - Brian Mackie-mason - Ann Arbor, MI United States
While this book is good at introducing the major topics and some of the commands important to the use of MATLAB you can't really learn any programming language without solving some practical problems. Usually when you're working with MATLAB you have to call upon a few very specific commands and can only learn those through real practice. So, this is as good a book as it can be, but books are not usually very useful in learning a computer language.
A great Matlab book - Christopher Hilling - Westerville, OH United States
This book was a requirement for my pre-engineering class at Ohio State. Since I am an adult learner with an extensive learning background, I can really appreciate the way the book is laid out. Rather than relying heavily on theory, the book uses real-world engineering examples that spans disciplines for a well-rounded set of example problems. I would only ding the book a half-star because of typographical errors in some of the problems.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 02, 2010 15:40:05
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