What is Matlab ?

The name MATLAB stands for MATrix LABoratory. MATLAB was written originallyto provide easy access to matrix software developed by the LINPACK (linear system package)and EISPACK (Eigen system package) projects.MATLAB is a high-performance language for technical computing. It integratescomputation,visualization, andprogrammingenvironment. Furthermore, MATLAB is amodern programming language environment: it has sophisticateddata structures, containsbuilt-in editing anddebugging tools, and supportsobject-oriented programming. These factorsmake MATLAB an excellent tool for teaching and research.MATLAB has many advantages compared to conventional computer languages (e.g.,C, FORTRAN) for solving technical problems. MATLAB is an interactive system whosebasic data element is anarraythat does not require dimensioning. The software packagehas been commercially available since 1984 and is now considered as a standard tool at mostuniversities and industries worldwide.It has powerfulbuilt-inroutines that enable a very wide variety of computations. Italso has easy to use graphics commands that make the visualization of results immediatelyavailable. Specific applications are collected in packages referred to astoolbox. There aretoolboxes for signal processing, symbolic computation, control theory, simulation, optimiza-tion, and several other fields of applied science and engineering.

Uses of MATLAB

MATLAB is widely used as a computational tool in science and engineering encompassing the fields of physics, chemistry, math and all engineering streams. It is used in a range of applications including:

• signal processing and Communications
  
• image and video Processing
  
• control systems
  
• test and measurement
  
• computational finance
  
• computational biology