What is this?
I co-authored the third edition of Introduction to Programming Concepts with MATLAB. This was a fun experience for me as I love teaching and trying to figure out the most effective way to present content for a learner.
Who’s the book intended for?
This book is intended for an introductory course in programming in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields while using MATLAB as the programming language. MATLAB is a popular computational software package used in universities and industries alike.
The purpose of this book is to provide the reader with a firm basic understanding of MATLAB syntax and fundamental programming concepts. Each lesson contains MATLAB programs that are used to help illustrate the concepts presented. By no means do the authors claim to present every MATLAB command, function, application, or programming concept in existence.
Material Covered in the Textbook
Each lesson contains screenshots of actual MATLAB programs that are used to help illustrate the concepts presented. More than 120 complete programs are shown throughout this book to demonstrate to the reader how to use programming concepts. The book is written in a USA-Today style question-answer format for a quick grasp of the concepts. The book has nine modules which have been each broken down by lessons. There are 42 lessons in all.
Modules 1-3 focus on MATLAB and programming basics like the MATLAB program interface, programming variables, different types of data, debugging, plotting, and applications to science and engineering problems. In Module 4, we show the use of MATLAB for basic mathematical procedures learned in the engineering courses including nonlinear equations, integration, differentiation, simultaneous linear equations, interpolation, regression, and ordinary differential equations.
In Modules 5-8, the user is introduced to basic programming concepts of conditional statements, repetition (loops), and custom functions.
In Module 9, program input/output is shown with writing to and reading from external files as well as navigating directories with MATLAB.
Important appendices include a primer on matrix algebra, a collection of mini-projects, and a introduction to animating plots in MATLAB. Appendix A provides a primer on matrix algebra. Appendix B contains a set of mini-projects. Appendix C demonstrates how to make animated plots in MATLAB.