Introduction to MATLAB

This course is a basic introduction to programming and data manipulation with MATLAB, a widely used scientific computing environment that is both easy to learn and versatile. MATLAB is commonly used in institutes and universities around the world because of the simplicity of its language, and its immense library of tools and functions. The first part of the course will be an introduction to general concepts of programming, such as variables, functions and control structures, and how they are implemented in the MATLAB language. In the second part, we will focus on how to apply basic programming techniques to tackle problems commonly encountered in scientific research. The topics covered will include simulating paradigmatic mathematical models as well as techniques for manipulating, analyzing and visualizing data. Beyond illustrating concrete applications in MATLAB, the course will set a good basis for understanding key concepts of programming, and provide a good starting point for other programming environments, such as Scilab, Octave or Python.