Customer Reviews

Essential MATLAB for Engineers and Scientists, Third Edition

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

 

 

This book was recommended by a professor as a good supplemental text. So far, I have been glad I bought it. The main text is very good, but very technical. This book helps to fill in some of the holes that come up.

It is quite bright and colorful inside, and not what I expected. It is easy to read and demonstrates how to get started using MATLAB.

As a professor who is in charge of selecting books for my courses at a very reputable institution, I have to say that I am very disappointed.

The main difference between the 3rd and 4th edition is that someone who is obviously very good at composition (but knows little or nothing about Matlab) has spent an extensive amount of time combing through the entire document to create a pristine-sounding, professional textbook. That person did a good job at his/her given task, and if that is your style preference, you will appreciate the 4th edition. I actually appreciated the casual tone of the 3rd edition, myself.

However, the content is *identical*.

And by identical, I mean, this includes any errors in the 3rd edition. For example, I was desperately hoping that if a new edition of this text were to be published, that someone would correct the issues in Chapter 13 (GUIs) due to the fact that Matlab no longer acts the way it used to. For example, p.295 (3rd edition) p. 266 (4th edition), the statement

disp('pushbutton1 Callback not implemented yet.')

is actually no longer auto-generated. Neither does the "varargout =" show up in the autogenerated code. On p.298/268 it says you need to select Tools, then "Application Options", when you need to in fact select Tools and then "GUI Options".

One of the most common requests I get from my best students is that they want to learn GUIs. I cannot recommend that they read ahead in the text, and in fact I am not even going to require the text, due to excessive issues of this sort. All I can tell them is to wait until we get to that topic in class, which may be the following semester!

Another issue I have is that much of the artwork appears to have been cheaply scanned from a paper copy of the old edition. These diagrams are fuzzy and hard to read in the new edition. It would not have taken too much extra effort to regenerate the screen captures.

My unsolicited advice: If you are going to create a new edition of a textbook for Engineers, next time, I would suggest you hire an Engineering graduate student rather than an English Literature graduate student, to go through the entire document for accuracy rather than adherence to grammatical standards. The improved language will do nothing to help your readers with the accuracy issues.

The title of this book is appropriate in that it is absolutely essential. The authors do well to walk one through the wonderful world of MATLAB while demonstrating its amazing computational sophistication. Starting with the basics, each chapter is more fun and exciting than the last as the reader is able to build upon their newly acquired knowledge and develop their own MATLAB scripts in no time. I have attempted to learn MATLAB with other resources but can say quite honestly that this book stands above all others that I have read, has made learning MATLAB fun, and is a pleasure to read. Do not hesitate buying this book because you are not "a math person"...you will become one after reading! Enjoy!

I recently took a class in Matlab and we used a different text book. I have experience working in other programming languages so this book is a little below me but the university is thinking of making this book their new text book for the course because it is comprehensive enough for a class of multi-leveled students. Those who know more about programming but still want an introduction to Matlab can skip through the dull parts and learn quickly and those who need more programming background will get the foundation they need

It didn't help me at all for my Intro to Scientific Computing class (EAS 105) at Penn. I was disappointed, but I'm sure it is useful for other people/classes

clc
clear
%this program, i mean book, teaches you the essentials to matlab programming.
%You'll be able to make a bunch of nerdy jokes too after reading it.
%matlab is pretty amazing, this book does a good job of showing you why.


for i=1:100
fprintf('matlab is not an abbreviation for materials laboratory')
end

I purchased this book from my a prof to use on a project at work. Really helped!!

This text is really quite useless. The only reason it is a required text for me is because Valentine is a professor at Clarkson. I highly recommend "Matlab for Engineers" by Holly Moore.