CHAPTER 1
Symbolic Variables and Functions
1-1. Symbolic Variables
MATLAB deems as symbolic any algebraic expression whose variables have all been previously defined as symbolic; variables are declared as symbolic using the command syms. For example, if we want to treat as symbolic the expression 6 * a * b + 3 * a^2 + 2 * a * b, in order to simplify it, we need to declare the two variables a and b as symbolic, as shown here:
>> syms a b>> simplify(6*a*b + 3*a^2 + 2*a*b)
ans =8 * a * b + 3 * a ^ 2
As we will see, the command needed to transform a numeric expression to symbolic is sym. For example, if we want to simplify the numeric expression ...
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