Chapter 16. *More Matrices

The objectives of this chapter are to demonstrate the use of matrices in a number of application areas, including

  • Population dynamics

  • Markov processes

  • Linear equations

And to introduce

  • MATLAB’s sparse matrix facilities

Leslie Matrices: Population Growth

Suppose we want to model the growth of a population of rabbits, in the sense that given their number at some moment we want to estimate the size of the population in a few years’ time. One approach is to divide the rabbit population into a number of age classes, where the members of each class are one time unit older than the members of the previous class. The time unit is whatever is convenient for the population being studied (days, months, etc.).

If Xi is the size of the ...

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