A few topics that are often points of confusion I've marked with (!). Be sure to study these.
1. mathematical expressions
how to write them in Matlab
- + * / ^ algebraic operations
\ solve system of equations Ax=b (x = A\b)
= assignment into variable
compact scientific notation (e.g. 1.4e-06)
complex numbers (e.g. 3 + 4*i)
Inf, NaN (!)
2. logical expressions (true and false, or 1 and 0)
(eg x<y is a logical expression, has value 1 or 0)
< > <= >= == ~= comparison operators
&& || xor ~ logical operators
how to combine these to create logical expressions
3. vectors and matrices
square-bracket notation for creating
row vectors
col vectors
matrices
when to use commas and semicolons
creating vectors with
linspace
colon syntax
creating vectors and matrices with
zeros
rand
randn
matrix-vector multiplication
how it works
dimensional compatibility
Ax=b problems
forming them from story problems
forming them from sets of linear equations
solving them numerically in Matlab
accessing/setting elements of vectors and matrices
(single elements, rows, columns, and subsets (!))
linear algebra operations on vectors and matrices
+ - * \ ^ '
elementwise operations on vectors, matrices (!)
- + .* ./ .^
matrix-vector input/output
load, save
4. plotting
making plots with
plot
semilogy
semilogx
loglog
making plots with multiple graphs
colored, dashed, dot-dashed etc lines
symbol markers
annotation
xlabel, ylabel, title, grid on, legend, axis
clf, hold on, hold off
graphical data analysis with each of above (!)
plot: y = mx + b
semilogy: y = c 10^(mx)
semilogx: y = m log x + b
loglog: y = c x^m
5. functions
how to write
anonymous functions
named functions in files or at command line
evaluating functions on data
solving nonlinear functions with fsolve
for loops
use to compute sums and products
perform an action repeatedly
6. miscellaneous built-in matlab functions
sum
mean
size
save
load
class
who
fsolve
prod
factorial
fprintf