MATLAB : An Introduction for Graduate Students
MATLAB is an interactive data visualization and processing tool, and high-level programming language. It is similar in many ways to IDL — the two packages approach the same problem from different starting points, and grow functionally closer together with time, although they differ in detail.
This introductory course is intended to provide complete beginners with sufficient background to get started using MATLAB, and to demonstrate why you might want to use it at all.
The notes available here are very limited at the moment; I'll add more just as soon as I can. In the mean time you could do well to follow a well known saying amongst programmers...R.T.F.M.! The online manual provided with matlab is very, very good. It contains the complete text of the printed manuals but with lots of convenient links, and executable code examples. The "Getting Started" section more or less covers everything in this course.
Starting MATLAB
MATLAB is available on the network for the School of Earth & Environment. On the SEE network use:
> app setup matlab
to setup the basic paths, then
> matlab &
to start matlab running (the '&' is required to detach the matlab session from the shell you started it from). To start the help/manual browser type:
> helpdesk
and you're away...
Course Powerpoint Slides, data files etc
The powerpoint slides and data files for the course can be found here.
Lots and lots of matlab functions relating to things meteorological can be found on the SEE-network under /home/lecimb/matlab - feel free to root around for anything you might find useful.
Useful functions:
wysiwyg.m - reformats current figure on screen to more closely match the size and layout of the printed figure.