Matlab

pimpy_c

I just want to know if there are any other people out there apart from Chemical Engineers that have to suffer through this horrible subject? I mean, Matlab truely is the most horrific thing in the world! Well I think so anyway so I just wana know if anyone agrees.

Also, to whom it may concern, the 3rd year Matlab assignment 3 hand up has been extended to Monday. Good news! Victory beers in Kilkenny!

gils11

Geek

breadmonkey

I actually like MATLAB, (I'm in Civil). Is there something wrong with me? *sniffle*

fletch

Is this actually used anywhere in industry?!

Red Alert

MATLAB's one hell of a program. make friends with it - trust me it makes your life a lot easier.

John_C

fletch wrote:

Is this actually used anywhere in industry?!

Yes, everywhere. Get used to it.

Red Alert

seriously making friends with MATLAB will do you loads of favours.

blondie83

Ah yes Matlab - frustrating to use at the start but not too bad when you get used to it. Makes handling arrays a lot easier, and like Red Alert said is actually a lot more powerful than you'd think from just a quick glance at it

rainbow kirby

I remember doing some Matlab in 2nd year maths physics... Didn't really like it. For some reason the whole "matrix as a basic data structure" thing kinda eluded me...

breadmonkey

Question for all MATLab users:

I have these labs out in ET and I have to say they are shocking. For some reason, MATLab seems to just overload once too many people are using it and just freezes up, which is a complete pain in the arse. We all end up getting logged in as one of the demonstrators. Why does it work like a chrm on their accounts?

Apart from that, sometimes things just don't work for no reason. For example, I was trying to plot something which involved cos(v^2+20) but MATLab took exception to my '^' telling me "matrix must be square". The demonstrators hadn't a clue why this happened since it worked for some people and not for others.

I'm actually getting really fed up with this. Our labs are more about patience and putting up with the computers and software than anything else. It's incredibly frustrating. Anyone shed any light on the situation?

Red Alert

there's a number of problems in UCD with MATLAB, mainly due to the gross incompetence of computer services. when you log in you'll see a whole load of stuff fly past on your login script, but basically it boils down to the fact that there are only two servers in ET: CUILLEANN and IVEAGH. So everyone overloads them. The demonstrators have a staff account which probably puts them on a different server for a start.

Eventually Civil Eng got so pissed off that they made Computer Services preinstall (a one-click operation for the thickos in deadalus - it's a feature of NAL) AutoCAD onto the hard drives of the local machines in ET. Maybe that should be done with MATLAB too...

mac_leinn

Hey breadmonkey,

The problem with cos(v^2 + 10) stems from "matlab using matrices as a basic unit".

WARNING!!! NERD ALERT!!!

Im assuming v is a nX1 vector so what your trying to do is multiply an nx1 vector by an nx1 vector, which cant be done because the inner indices dont match. I presume what your want to do is multiply each element of the vector by itself, in that case use:

cos(v.^2 + 10)

Note the fullstop before the "^". This tells matlab to beform any operation (eg + - / * ^) term by term.

NERD ALERT CANCELLED!

Hope this helps.

All the best,
mac

Red Alert

yes indeed, by default MATLAB assumes matrix, not array operations.

John_C

Red Alert wrote:

yes indeed, by default MATLAB assumes matrix, not array operations.

Nerd Alert, of course it assumes matrix operations, that's what "Mat" stands for.

Yes, computer services are ****, ET or not.

Youre question sounds to me like you tought "v" was a constant where as you defined it as an array or matrix. Matlab is correct to teach you a bit of discipline in this.