Customer Reviews

Engineering and Scientific Computing with Scilab

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a good book describing an excellent free scientific Matlab-like software package available for many computing platforms. It complements well the extensive on-line help of the software and the information available on the Web.

The first three chapters gives a condensed overview of the software. I found the description of the graphics capabilities particularly useful as a reference. The next two chapters describe the use of the software for linear algebra, polynomials, linking to C and FORTRAN, and more advanced aspects. The remaining chapters concern tools and applications mainly of a system oriented nature. The tools are generally of a very high quality and accuracy, but of course slower than in compiled languages.

The book would have been been even more useful if it included more information on how to customize the software and a more comprehensive index. Also, the linking to C and FORTRAN routines does not appear to be completely simple.

The book "Engineering and Scientific Computing" in Scilab,
presents clearly the elements of the Scilab language.
A scientist with some programming background,
even elementary, can readily learn and exploit the
elegant and compact Scilab scientific programming
environment.
However, the strongest point of the book is its tutorial
value. The reader can through the Scilab tool,
improve the knowledge of important signal processing topics,
exploit algorithms for the numerical solution of ODEs and
tackle with optimization problems. Furthermore, the book contains
excellent material on SCICOS (the dynamical system builder
that accompanies Scilab) and a lot of applications.
The CD that is included with the book is also very helpful.
The presented scientific applications are aimed mainly
to the advanced scientists and engineers, although a large part
can be utilized and by undergraduate students of an intermediate
level.
In summary, I liked and enjoyed this book and I strongly
recommend it to all the scientific/engineering community.

Yes, Scilab has very good help system. But you have to start somehow. If you know Matlab already, you will have no problems with Scilab. If you don't know Matlab, you need this book. This is the "hello, world" class book for Scilab, describes basic programming constructs as well as methods for building programs using Scilab building blocks. Examples go from trivial to rather complicated and practical.

Even if you have mastered Scilab, you will neeed this book as quick reference. It is always close to my keyboard. Highly recommended!