Cleve Moler wrote:Although MATLAB is now a full fledged Technical Computing Environment, it started in the late 1970s as a simple "Matrix Laboratory". We want to build on this laboratory tradition by describing a series of experiments involving applied mathematics, technical computing, and MATLAB programming.

We expect that you already know something about high school level material in geometry, algebra, and trigonometry. We will introducing ideas from calculus, matrix theory, and ordinary differential equations, but we do not assume that you have already taken courses in the subjects. In fact, these experiments are useful supplements to such courses.

We also expect that you have some experience with computers, perhaps with word processors or spread sheets. If you know something about programming in languages like C or Java, that will be helpful, but not required. We will introduce MATLAB by way of examples. Many of the experiments involve understanding and modifying MATLAB scripts and functions that we have already written.

You should have access to MATLAB and to our exm toolbox, the collection of programs and data that are described in Experiments with MATLAB. We hope you will not only use these programs, but will read them, understand them, modify them, and improve them. The exm toolbox is the apparatus in our "Laboratory".