Matrices

Matrices on MatLab

An array is a collection of numbers or strings (text) and matrices are simply 2-dimentional arrays. Matlab 'understands' every parametre as a matrix. Even single numbers (e.g. x = 1) and vectors (e.g. v = [1 3 2]) are taken as 1-by-1 and (in this example) 1-by-3 matrices.

Creating Matrices

Entering matrices on Matlab is fairly easy. They are input by entering a list of numbers separated by commas (,) for elements on a same row and semi-colons (;) for elements on the next row.
As such, inputting:

A = [1, 2, 3; 4, 5, 6; 7, 8, 9];
B = [10, 11, 12; 13, 14, 15; 16, 17, 18];

Gives:

A =
    1    2    3
    4    5    6
    7    8    9

B =
    10   11   12
    13   14   15
    16   17   18

It is possible to concatenate matrices (link smaller matrices to make a bigger one) as such:

C = [A ; B];

Which gives:

C =
     1    2    3
     4    5    6
     7    8    9
    10   11   12
    13   14   15
    16   17   18

It is also possible to create matrices using the incremental notation seen earlier in order to save time by not having to write out each individual value:

D = [100: -11: 50; 45: -11: 0];

This gives a 2-by-5 matrix between 100 and 0 of increments -11:

D =
    100    89    78    67    56
     45    34    23    12     1

When creating matrices, further shortcuts include

Indexing

Consider the matrix:

A = [1, 2, 3; 4, 5, 6; 7, 8, 9];

Written as:

A =
    1    2    3
    4    5    6
    7    8    9

1. Selecting the element in row 2 and column 3:

A(2,3)

Which returns:

ans =
    6

2. Selecting the element in rows 1 to 2 and column 2 to 3:

A(1:2,2:3)

Which returns:

ans =
    2    3
    5    6

3. Selecting the first row:

A(1,:)

Which returns:

ans =
    1    2    3

4. Selecting the third column:

A(:,3)

Which returns:

ans =
    3
    6
    9

5. Selecting the element of index '4':

A(4)

Which returns:

ans =
    2

N.B. MatLab indexes from 1 (not 0, unlike many other languages) and down each column. As such, in matrix A, the numbers 1, 4, 7 and 2 respectively have indices of 1, 2, 3 and 4. It is also possible of selecting multiple elements based on their indices using  A(index_1, index_2, ..., index_n).