MATLAB has an exten- sive number of built-in math functions, and users can de ne their own functions and save them as a le for reuse. Chapter 4 treats programming with MATLAB and covers relational and log- ical operators, conditional statements, for and while loops, and the switch structure.
Chap- ter 3 covers le usage, functions built into MA TLAB, and user-de ned functions. Chapter 4 covers programming using relational and logical operators, condi- tional statements, and loops. Chapters 5 through 11 are independent chapters that can be covered in any order.
Lines between closely spaced points are always used to plot a function. The MATLAB basic xy plotting function is plot(x,y) as we saw in Chapter 1. If x and y are vectors, a single curve is plotted with the x values on the abscissa and the y values on the ordinate.
MATLAB is an interactive system whose basic data element is an array that does not require dimensioning. The software package has been commercially available since 1984 and is now considered as a standard tool at most universities and industries worldwide. It has powerful built-in routines that enable a very wide variety of computations.