This is a quick and informal guide to Matlab, arranged in five lessons: the basics, functions, matrix notation, truth values and ‘for’ loops. This gives the most basic building blocks, but Matlab can do a lot more. To discover more, try the commands help (e.g. help plot) and lookfor (e.g. lookfor correlation). While help gives the syntax for a single command, lookfor finds all potentially relevant functions available.

Lesson 1 The very basics

The ‘Mat‘ in Matlab has nothing to do with maths but with matrices: the program is a ‘Matrix Laboratory’. However, one does not have to worry about the details of matrix algebra: that's where the program's roots are, but it has evolved into something quite versatile.