December 2010
Beginner to intermediate
429 pages
9h 55m
English
Content preview from MATLAB®: An Introduction with Applications, Fourth EditionBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 11. Symbolic Math
All of the mathematical operations done with MATLAB in the first 10 chapters were numerical. The operations were carried out by writing numerical expressions that could contain numbers and variables with preassigned numerical values. When a numerical expression is executed by MATLAB, the outcome is also numerical (a single number or an array with numbers). The number, or numbers, are either exact or a floating point–approximated value. For example, typing 1/4 gives 0.2500—an exact value, and typing 1/3 gives 0.3333—an approximated value.
Many applications in math, science, and engineering require symbolic operations, which are mathematical operations with expressions that contain symbolic variables (variables that don’t have specific numerical values when the operation is executed). The result of such operations is also a mathematical expression in terms of the symbolic variables. One simple example involves solving an algebraic equation that contains several variables and solving for one variable in terms of the others. If a, b, and x are symbolic variables, and ax – b = 0, x can be solved in terms of a and b to give. Other examples of symbolic operations are analytical differentiation or integration of mathematical expressions. For instance, the derivative of 2t3 + 5t – 8 with respect to t is 6t2 + 5.
MATLAB has the capability of carrying out many types of symbolic operations. The numerical part of the symbolic operation is carried out by MATLAB exactly, ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.