Lecture notes on MATLAB

August 19, 2007

Contents

1 Example: Plotting a function 2

2 Scripts 3

3 Setting up vectors 4

4 Vector and Matrix operations 5

5 Plotting 8

6 Printing data 9

7 For loops 10

8 While loops 10

9 Functions 11

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1 Example: Plotting a function

Starting MATLAB:
Windows: search for MATLAB icon or link and click
Linux: % ssh linux.unm.edu
% matlab
or
% matlab -nojvm

Sample MATLAB code illustrating several Matlab features; code to plot the graph of y =
sin(2πx), x ∈ [0, 1]: What is really going on when you use software to graph a function?

1. The function is sampled at a set of points xk to obtain yk = f (xk ).

2. The points (xk , yk ) are then plotted together with some interpolant of the data (piece-
wise linear or a smoother curve such as splines of Bezier curves).

In MATLAB you specify xk , then compute yk . The command plot(x,y) outputs a piecewise
linear interpolant of the data.

% Set up gridpoints x(k)

x=[0.0, 0.1,0.2,0.3,0.4...
0.5,0.6,0.7,0.8,0.9,1.0];
% Set up functions values y(k)
n=length(x);
y=zeros(1,n);
for k=1:n
y(k)=sin(2*pi*x(k)); %pi is predefined
end
% plot a piecewise linear interpolant to the points (x(k),y(k))
plot(x,y)

Notes:

(1) The % sign denotes the begining of a comment. Code is well commented!

(2) The continuation symbol is ...

(3) The semicolon prevents displaying intermediate results (try it, what happens if you omit
it?)

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(4) length,zeros,sin,plot are built in MATLAB functions. Later on we will write our
own functions.

(5) In Matlab variables are defined when they are used. Reason for y=zeros(1,n): allocate
amount of memory for variable y; initialize. How much memory space is allocated to y if
that line is absent, as you step through the loop? Why is zeros not used before defining x?

(6) In Matlab all variables are matrices. Column vectors are nx1, row vectors are 1xn, scalars
are 1x1 matrices. What is output of size(x)?

(7) All vectors/matrices are indexed starting with 1. What is x(1), x(2), x(10), x(0)?

(8) Square brackets are used to define vectors. Round brackets are used to access entries in
vectors.

(9) Note syntax of for loop.

(10) What is the output of

plot(x,y,’*’)
plot(x,y,’*-’)
plot(x,y,’*-r’)

See Tutorial for further plotting options. Lets create a second vector z = cos(2πx) and plot
both y vs x in red dashed curve with circle markers, and z in green solid curve with crosses
as markers. Then use default. But first:

2 Scripts

MATLAB Script m-file: A file (appended with .m) stored in a directory containing MATLAB
code. From now on I will write all code in scripts so I can easily modify it. To write above
code in script:

make a folder with your name

if appropriate, make a folder in that folder for current howework/topic
in MATLAB, go to box next to "current directory" and find directory
click on "File/New/M-file", edit, name, save
or click on existing file to edit
execute script by typing its name in MATLAB command window
lets write a script containing above code

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Save your work on Floppy or USBport, or ftp to other machine. No guarantees that your
folders will be saved.

Now I’d like to modify this code and use more points to obtain a better plot by changing
the line defining x, using spacing of 1/100 instead of 1/10. But how to set up x with 101
entries??

3 Setting up vectors
Row Vectors

• Explicit list

x=[0 1 2 3 4 5];
x=[0,1,2,3,4,5];

• Using a:increment:b. To set up a vector from x=a to x=b in increments of size h you
can use

x=a:h:b;

Here you specify beginning and endpoints, and stepsize. Most natural to me. However,
if (b-a) is not an integer multiple of stepsize, endpoint will be omitted. Note, if h
omitted, default stepsize =1. What is?

x=0:0.1:1;
x=0:5;

We already used this notation in the for loop!

• Using linspace

x=linspace(a,b,n);

Use linspace to set up x=[0 1 2 3 4], x=[0,0.1,0.2,...,1], x=[0,0.5,1,1.5,2],

x=a:h:b

• Using for loops

Column Vectors

• Explicit list

x=[0;1;2;3;4;5];

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 • Transpose row vector

x=[0:.1:1]’;

Matrices

A=[1 1 1; 2 0 -1; 3 -1 2; 0 1 -1];

A=zeros(1,4); B=zeros(5,2); C=eye(3); D=ones(2,4); %special matrices

How to access entry in second row, first column? WHat is A(1,1), A(2,0)?

Now we have a better way to define x using h = 1/100! Do it.

Try x-y where x row, y column!!

4 Vector and Matrix operations

We can replace the for loop in the example in §1.1 by

y=sin(2*pi*x);

The sine function is applied to a vector x and applies the sine operation to each entry in the
vector. This is the same as

y(1:n)=sin(2*pi*x(1:n));

and thereby the same as (!)

k=1:n
y(k)=sin(2*pi*x(k));

Note that this looks almost like the for loop in the example in §1.1 but it is not a loop. All
entries of y are set at once. We can now give a short version of the MATLAB code to plot
the graph of y = sin(2πx):

x=0:.01:1;
y=sin(2*pi*x);
plot(x,y)

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Since vectors are special cases of matrices, the above operation can also be applied to ma-
trices. The statement B=sin(A) applies the sine function to every entry in A.

Setting up matrices. Before further addressing matrix operations, I want to mention

another possibility to set up matrices. First note that the line A=[1 1 1; 2 0 -1; 3 -1
2; 0 1 -1]; in §1.3 can be written as

A=[1 1 1
2 0 -1
3 -1 2
0 1 -1
];

(the commas and semicolons are not necessary in this form). If you create, possibly using
FORTRAN or C, a file that contains a matrix of numbers, and enter A=[ and ]; before and
after, you can read these numbers in as a script. For example, I created (in FORTRAN) a
file called t22dat.m that contains the following lines

% t xcore ycore ylmb ulmb uf xf jctr n

a=[
0.00000 0.000000 0.924700 0.81650 0.16004 0.590545 0.000000 2 400
0.02500 0.002659 0.924680 0.81650 0.16013 0.590451 0.014763 93 400
0.05000 0.005320 0.924620 0.81650 0.16039 0.590168 0.029521 92 400
0.07500 0.007981 0.924520 0.81650 0.16081 0.589698 0.044270 93 400
0.10000 0.010643 0.924380 0.81650 0.16141 0.589041 0.059004 92 400
0.12500 0.013301 0.924190 0.81650 0.16216 0.588201 0.073720 93 400

...

59.90000 12.920807 0.822010 0.81665 0.21526 0.216202 13.726140 73 3761

59.92500 12.926320 0.822030 0.81665 0.21526 0.216193 13.731545 72 3764
59.95000 12.931837 0.822050 0.81665 0.21526 0.216184 13.736949 73 3768
59.97500 12.937345 0.822080 0.81665 0.21526 0.216175 13.742354 72 3772
];

(where the dots denote the remaining 2390 lines). I can now read this matrix into MATLAB
and extract the vectors t and ylmb for example as follows

t22dat %this executes all 2402 lines in the script

t=a(:,1) %extract vector t, note colon notation
ylmb=a(:,4) %extract vector ylmb
plot(t,ylmb) %plot one vs the other

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Note: entries of vectors are accessed using round brackets. Vectors are defined using square
brackets.

More matrix operations.

A+B %A,B need to have same dimensions

A*B %A,B need to have proper dimensions (number
% of columns of A=number of rows of B)

If x is a vector, what is

x*x

? Answer: error!, Inner matrix dimensions dont agree. If x is a row vector, and y is a column
vector, what is

x*y

PN
Answer:
qP the inner product k=1 xk yk . For example to compute the Euclidean norm of x,
N 2
k=1 xk you can use the one-line code

euclidnormx=sqrt(x*x’);

What is

y*x

Answer: an nxn matrix called the outer product.

What if you instead of plotting y = sin(x) you want to plot y = x2 ? Given a vector x you
want to create a vector y whose entries are the square of the entries of x. The following

x=0:.01:1;
y=x*x;
or
y=x^2; %the hat is MATLABs symbol for exponentiation

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wont work. Instead, to perform componentwise operations you need to add a . in the correct
place. Try

y=x.^2;
y=A.^2;
y=1./x;
y=x.*z; %where x,z are vectors/matrices of same length

Another useful built in MATLAB function is

s=sum(x);

Use the help command to figure out what it does.

5 Plotting

Labelling plots. In class we used:

plot(x,y,’r:x’) %options for color/line type/marker type

xlabel(’this is xlabel’)
ylabel(’this is ylabel \alpha \pi’) %using greek alphabet
title(’this is title’)
text(0.1,0.3,’some text’) %places text at given coordinates
text(0.1,0.3,’some text’,’FontSize’,20) %optional override fontsize
set(gca,’FontSize’,20) %override default fontsize
axis([0,1,-2,2]) %sets axis
axis square %square window
axis equal %units on x- and y-axis have same length
figure(2) %creates new figure or accesses existing figure(2)

Plotting several functions on one plot. Suppose we created x=0:.1:1; y1=sin(x);

y2=cos(x);. Two options. First one:

plot(x,y1,x,y2) %using default colors/lines/markers

plot(x,y1,’b--0’,x,y2,’r-’) %customizing
legend(’sin(x)’,’cos(x)’,3) %nice way to label, what does entry ’3’ do?

Second one: using hold command:

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 plot(x,y1)
hold on
plot(x,y2)
hold off

Type help hold to see what this does. If you dont want to save the previous plot you can
view consecutive plots using pause command in your script (what happens if pause is missing
from below?)

plot(x,y1)
pause
plot(x,y2)

Creating several plots.

subplot(3,2,1) %creates and accesses 1st subplot of a 3x2 grid

figure(3) %creates and accesses new window

6 Printing data

Printing tables:

disp(’ x sin(x)’)
for k=1:n
disp(sprintf(’%3.1f %6.4f’, x(k),y(k)));
end

What does the format %3.1f specify? Type help sprintf to see how to format integers,
character strings, etc.

Printing figure:

print %prints current figure to printer

print -deps name %creates name.eps file (encapsulated postscript)
% of current figure and stores in directory
print -depsc name %creates name.eps file in color of current figure
print -dpsc name %creates name.ps (postscript) file in color

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7 For loops

% The command for repeats statements for a specific number of times.

% The general form of the while statement is

FOR variable=expr
statements
END

% expr is often of the form i0:j0 or i0:l:j0.

% Negative steps l are allowed.
% Example : What does this code do?

n = 10;
for i=1:n
for j=1:n
a(i,j) = 1/(i+j-1);
end
end

8 While loops

% The command while repeats statements an indefinite number of times,

% as long as a given expression is true.
% The general form of the while statement is

WHILE expression
statement
END

% Example 1: What does this code do?

x = 4;
y = 1;
n = 1;
while n<= 10;
y = y + x^n/factorial(n);
n = n+1;
end

% Remember to initialize $n$ and update its value in the loop!

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9 Functions

MATLAB Functions are similar to functions in Fortran or C. They enable us to write the
code more efficiently, and in a more readable manner.

The code for a MATLAB function must be placed in a separate .m file having the same name
as the function. The general structure for the function is

function <Output parameters>=<Name of Function><Input Parameters>

% Comments that completely specify the function

<function body>

When writing a function, the following rules must be followed:

• Somewhere in the function body the desired value must be assigned to the output
variable!
• Comments that completely specify the function should be given immediately after the
function statement. The specification should describe the output and detail all input
value assumptions.
• The lead block of comments after the function statement is displayed when the func-
tion is probed using help.
• All variables inside the function are local and are not part of the MATLAB workspace

Exercise 1: Write a function with input parameters x and n that evaluates the nth order Taylor
approximation of ex . Write a script that calls the function for various values of n and
plots the error in the approximation.

Solution: The following code is written in a file called ApproxExp.m:

function y=ApproxExp(x,n);
% Output parameter: y (nth order Taylor approximation of $e^x$)
% Input parameters: x (scalar)
% n (integer)

sumo = 1;
for k=1:n
sumo = sumo + x^k/factorial(k);
end
y = sumo;

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(What does this code do? First, set k=1. Then k=2. Then k=3. etc. Write out the
result after each time through loop.) A script that references the above function and plots
approximation error is:

x=4;
for n=1:10
z(n) =ApproxExp(x,n)
end
exact=exp(4)
plot(abs(exact-z))

Exercise 2: Do the same as Exercises 1, but let x and y be vectors.

Example: An example of a function that outputs more than one variable. The function computes
the approximate derivative of function fname, the error in the approximation, and
the estimated error. The following code is written in a file called MyDeriv.m:

function [d,err]=MyDeriv(fname,dfname,a,h);
% Output parameter: d (approximate derivative using
% finite difference (f(h+h)-f(a))/h)
% err (approximation error)
% Input parameters: fname (name of function)
% dfname (name of derivative function)
% a (point at which derivative approx)
% h (stepsize)

d = ( fname(a+h)-fname(a) )/h;
err = abs(d-dfname(a));

(Note: this works using MATLAB versions 7.0 but not 6.1. For an older MATLAB version
you may have to use the feval command. See help, Daishu or me.)

A script that references the above function and plots the approximation error:

a=1;
h=logspace(-1,-16,16);
n=length(h);
for i=1:n
[d(i),err(i)]=MyDeriv(@sin,@cos,a,h(i));
end
loglog(h,err)

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Exercise: What happens if you call

d=MyDeriv(@sin,@cos,a,h)
or simply
MyDeriv(@sin,@cos,a,h)

You can replace sin and cos by user defined functions, for example ’f1’ and ’df1’. Do
it. That is, you need to write the function that evaluates f1 and df1 at x (in files f1.m and
df1.m).

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