Customer Reviews

MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Not a bad book per se - if you are an absolute beginner with Matlab.

However, for the asking price, there are some rather glaring deficiencies.

Here are the major ones:

1. It doesn't go far enough. After working through the examples, it leaves one not entirely self-sufficient and confident.

2. There are quite a few copy-editing mistakes, particularly in the current edition.

3. Feels too generic. In a nutshell, one can't shake the feeling that this represents a somewhat annotated help file. As the in-built Matlab help is getting better and better all the time, the need for such a generic book becomes questionable.

4. Outdated. This book is 3 releases behind the current version of Matlab - and it shows. Some basic features that were introduced in the more recent releases of Matlab are - naturally - not discussed here.

Recommendation: Release a new edition that catches up with the evolution of Matlab, fixes the copyediting mistakes, goes farther and includes more distinctive examples.

I am a robotics engineering masters student who is REALLY behind on his Matlab knowledge based on the fact that i have a background in biology. (Long story). I just completed my first semester and bought this book in May to learn matlab more thoroughly over the summer. This book is just FANTASTIC. I couldn't ask for more. It is structured logically, the examples are CLEAR and it just makes total sense. I never realized that it would be this readable and excellent. If you are a beginner it can truly be read cover to cover. The problems are interesting and the step by step guides are just what i needed. I initially thought twice about spending the $80 when there were cheaper texts available, but let me tell you from experience, don't bother. I have read some other Matlab texts and they pale in comparison to this one. It is worth every penny. If you have a limited knowledge or are without any knowledge of Matlab GET THIS BOOK. It is great and worth the extra money.

This is the book for you if you are new to MATLAB. The book covers the basic steps of MATLAB and how to apply them to real word engineering or mathematical problems in an interactive environment.

The book is well written and is very easy to use. This is a great book for the beginner, but I would not recommend the book for anyone that has over 6 months of experience.

This book is a tutorial for engineers with no prior experience with MATLAB. The author assumes no experience with other programming languages. Although the book claims it is written with freshman engineers in mind, knowledge of calculus and some engineering experience is needed to get the most out of the book. Each chapter fully explains one aspect of MATLAB, followed by several examples of using MATLAB to solve engineering problems, and a problem set at the end of the chapter. The author explains the basic features of MATLAB clearly with a minimum of words, so that the reader can use the book later as a reference. The book is thin enough to be easily carried in a backpack with other textbooks.

Numerical or graphical answers to most even-numbered problems are given in the back of the book. This allows students to check their work without being able to "cheat". The problems often require more than just knowledge of MATLAB to solve, so students practice solving actual engineering problems instead of merely typing in formulas and numbers. Even some problems that are relatively straightforward require some thought before writing the MATLAB code. The problems really make you think about the best way to approach a problem in MATLAB. The problems contain realistic examples from physics, mathematics, and chemistry, as well as few from economics and biology, but some problems look like contrived complicated mathematical expressions with no practical use.

One problem with the book is that units and significant figures are glossed over. Many answers in the back of the book do not give the units, and are given with the number of digits that MATLAB displays rather than the number of significant digits the engineering solution should have. Sometimes the answers are numbers without a clarification of what quantity the numbers represent.

This book explains all the basics of MATLAB and doesn't waste space explaining basic engineering concepts, making this one I will carry around with me when I need to do MATLAB programming for my classes.

This book was a requirement for my pre-engineering class at Ohio State. Since I am an adult learner with an extensive learning background, I can really appreciate the way the book is laid out. Rather than relying heavily on theory, the book uses real-world engineering examples that spans disciplines for a well-rounded set of example problems. I would only ding the book a half-star because of typographical errors in some of the problems.

I bought this book to help me in a computational Physics course where we were using FORTRAN to create the data, and matlab to visualize it. Mostly 2d and 3d graphics. This book was an enormous help to me. I have other books on matlab, but none even came close to this one. Mr. Gilat gives a good treatment of the surf, mesh, meshgrid, plot3, and other graphics functions that you would be hard pressed to find even in the matlab help file. I give this one 5 stars.

While this book is good at introducing the major topics and some of the commands important to the use of MATLAB you can't really learn any programming language without solving some practical problems. Usually when you're working with MATLAB you have to call upon a few very specific commands and can only learn those through real practice. So, this is as good a book as it can be, but books are not usually very useful in learning a computer language.

great seller. got my book faster than imagined and it was packaged nicely
would totally recommend this person.

The Item was in very good condition & the shipping was prompt & before time.