This is a practical, step-by-step guide that will help you to quickly become a proficient Octave user. The book is packed with clear examples, screenshots, and code to carry out your data analysis without any problems. This book is intended for anyone interested in scientific computing and data analysis. The reader should have a good level of mathematics and a basic understanding of programming will be useful, although it is not a prerequisite
GNU Octave Beginner's Guide
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About the Author
Jesper Schmidt Hansen
Jesper Schmidt Hansen holds a Ph.D. in soft-material science and is currently doing research in the field of nanofluidics and dynamics at Roskilde University, Denmark. He has been using GNU Octave on a daily basis for many years, both as a student and later as a researcher. The applications have varied from solving partial and ordinary differential equations, simple data plotting, and data generation for other applications, to dynamical system investigations and advanced data analysis.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
GNU Octave Beginner's Guide by Jesper Schmidt Hansen is a good, readable introduction to Octave. It will shorten your learning curve, and get you up and running quickly.
Octave is an open source alternative to MATLAB. So, why use Octave instead of MATLAB?
MATLAB is an extremely powerful, yet easy to use software package for scientific, engineering, and mathematical computations. MATLAB is also very expensive. An individual commercial license costs $2100. To use MATLAB, as an individual, you must purchase a commercial license, unless you are a student enrolled in an academic institution, or you work for an academic institution, even if your use is personal and not commercial. Not sure about you, but $2100 puts MATLAB a bit outside my price range.
If you already have access to MATLAB, great! Use it.
If not, Octave is a good alternative as it provides much of the functionality of MATLAB, with none of the cost.
Like Python, Octave is a high level, interpreted programming language. Unlike Python, it is focused on numerical computation. With its interactive shell, you can use Octave like an advanced calculator, to get immediate results, and to test code fragments. But you can also develop advanced programs using Octave.
So, what does Hansen's "GNU Octave Beginner's Guide" have to offer? Quite a lot if you are just starting out using Octave.
Chapter 1 walks you through installing Octave for Windows and Linux, setting and storing defaults, adding packages, etc. Everyone should read the instructions for both operating systems, as some useful information appears only one place.
Chapter 2 teaches you to use scalars, vectors, matrices, strings, arrays and solve linear equations.
Chapter 3 tells you how to use Octave's built-in functions, and how to make 2-d and 3-d plots.
Chapter 4 covers programing essentials, including using if, switch, for, do, and while statements; controlling exceptions; input and output; and saving and restoring scripts.
Chapter 5 teaches you to write and use your own functions, and introduces you to debugging and vectorization.
Chapter 6 introduces you to sparse matrices, and walks you through all the steps needed to build an Octave package that solves 1-d and 2-d Poisson partial differential equations.
Chapter 7 deals with data files and data analysis, descriptive statistics, fitting functions to data, and use of Fast Fourier Transforms in data analysis and smoothing.
Chapter 8, the final chapter, tells you how to make Octave programs run faster and how to call routines written in C++.
All considered, this book covers a lot of territory, and does it very well. The only negative is that some typos are scattered throughout the book. But they are minor, and I didn't find any that would cause problems.
Octave is an open source alternative to MATLAB. So, why use Octave instead of MATLAB?
MATLAB is an extremely powerful, yet easy to use software package for scientific, engineering, and mathematical computations. MATLAB is also very expensive. An individual commercial license costs $2100. To use MATLAB, as an individual, you must purchase a commercial license, unless you are a student enrolled in an academic institution, or you work for an academic institution, even if your use is personal and not commercial. Not sure about you, but $2100 puts MATLAB a bit outside my price range.
If you already have access to MATLAB, great! Use it.
If not, Octave is a good alternative as it provides much of the functionality of MATLAB, with none of the cost.
Like Python, Octave is a high level, interpreted programming language. Unlike Python, it is focused on numerical computation. With its interactive shell, you can use Octave like an advanced calculator, to get immediate results, and to test code fragments. But you can also develop advanced programs using Octave.
So, what does Hansen's "GNU Octave Beginner's Guide" have to offer? Quite a lot if you are just starting out using Octave.
Chapter 1 walks you through installing Octave for Windows and Linux, setting and storing defaults, adding packages, etc. Everyone should read the instructions for both operating systems, as some useful information appears only one place.
Chapter 2 teaches you to use scalars, vectors, matrices, strings, arrays and solve linear equations.
Chapter 3 tells you how to use Octave's built-in functions, and how to make 2-d and 3-d plots.
Chapter 4 covers programing essentials, including using if, switch, for, do, and while statements; controlling exceptions; input and output; and saving and restoring scripts.
Chapter 5 teaches you to write and use your own functions, and introduces you to debugging and vectorization.
Chapter 6 introduces you to sparse matrices, and walks you through all the steps needed to build an Octave package that solves 1-d and 2-d Poisson partial differential equations.
Chapter 7 deals with data files and data analysis, descriptive statistics, fitting functions to data, and use of Fast Fourier Transforms in data analysis and smoothing.
Chapter 8, the final chapter, tells you how to make Octave programs run faster and how to call routines written in C++.
All considered, this book covers a lot of territory, and does it very well. The only negative is that some typos are scattered throughout the book. But they are minor, and I didn't find any that would cause problems.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
My first pass at Octave was a few weeks ago, when I took a scattershot approach to learn just enough Octave to get some quick work done on a data analysis project. As soon as I heard about this book, I bought it and read it start to finish, with frequent expressions of "Oh, I wish I'd known that!" or "That would be a much cleaner way to do it."
Hansen takes the user through the learning process in a step-by-step way, each step building on the one before it with just the right amount of new material to draw the reader along without feeling overwhelmed. Yes, you should know some math, but that's a prerequisite for using Octave in the first place. The examples are interesting enough to show the reader how to get real work done without a huge amount of effort. Hansen also highlights ways to make Octave scripts highly compatible with Matlab. Had I known these tips on my first project, my Matlab-user colleague would not have had to edit what I gave him to run my programs on his system.
The biggest suggestion for improvement, which I have already passed along to Hansen, is to add some tips on reading data files not specifically created by or for Octave.
This is definitely a good read for a new Octave user.
Hansen takes the user through the learning process in a step-by-step way, each step building on the one before it with just the right amount of new material to draw the reader along without feeling overwhelmed. Yes, you should know some math, but that's a prerequisite for using Octave in the first place. The examples are interesting enough to show the reader how to get real work done without a huge amount of effort. Hansen also highlights ways to make Octave scripts highly compatible with Matlab. Had I known these tips on my first project, my Matlab-user colleague would not have had to edit what I gave him to run my programs on his system.
The biggest suggestion for improvement, which I have already passed along to Hansen, is to add some tips on reading data files not specifically created by or for Octave.
This is definitely a good read for a new Octave user.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The cover of "GNU Octave - Beginners Guide" sums us my view of this book rather nicely, "Learn by doing: less theory, more results."
This book is targeted toward those just beginning to use GNU Octave. The book is written in a style that finds a middle ground between a textbook and a how-to. As it is well organized, experienced users may also find it useful as a reference.
Essential topics such as an introduction to GNU Octave itself, language syntax, and the use and application of GNU Octave are provided. In addition, detailed description of the installation process for Windows and Linux systems is also provided.
There are several advanced features of GNU Octave that provide great value, but are often overlooked by beginners and even the more advanced users. This book provides a good introduction to many of these. For example, advanced topics that such as vectorization, documentation, package development, linking to C++, and Octave Forge (web based community of users) are introduced in a with a welcome level of clarity.
This book is targeted toward those just beginning to use GNU Octave. The book is written in a style that finds a middle ground between a textbook and a how-to. As it is well organized, experienced users may also find it useful as a reference.
Essential topics such as an introduction to GNU Octave itself, language syntax, and the use and application of GNU Octave are provided. In addition, detailed description of the installation process for Windows and Linux systems is also provided.
There are several advanced features of GNU Octave that provide great value, but are often overlooked by beginners and even the more advanced users. This book provides a good introduction to many of these. For example, advanced topics that such as vectorization, documentation, package development, linking to C++, and Octave Forge (web based community of users) are introduced in a with a welcome level of clarity.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Gentle way to get to know the programming language Octave
This is a good guide for someone with previous programming experience (at least some) or undergraduates with a math background who want to learn to use computers as a powerful math... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mark A. Lytle
Better than nothing
This is probably the only octave primer out there. A must have. Not the most thorough, and probably not worth $40 except for that there's nothing else.
Published 6 months ago by Mr. Nelson Chung
use Octave ONLY for cost reasons; and even then NOT for statistics
There are better mathematical software packages than Octave. Better in having way more features, like symbolic maths, which as far as I can tell from this book, Octave simply does... Read more
Published 9 months ago by W Boudville
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