Mathematics using MATLAB. An introduction to engineers and scientists (Q4514938)

This book exactly does what it claims to do. It introduces scientists and engineers to the use of MATLAB in their mathematical and numerical work. It can also be used as a reference book or an exercise book for teachers and professional workers in science and engineering. One of the remarkable features is that for each topic the book contains first a description of the underlying mathematics before introducing the possibilities that MATLAB offers. Remarkably, the stress in the work is not really on the numerical aspects of MATLAB; the presence of the Symbolic Math Toolbox is usually assumed and extensively used. The reviewer agrees that this is a very good viewpoint. In general, this is a very good book and the reviewer feels that it will be really useful for its readers. The book contains 30 fairly short chapters (the total number of pages is 550). The first 18 chpaters deal with the aspects of Maple that are interesting to the general user in science and engineering. The other chapters each deal with a different mathematical topic. We mention (in that order) finite series and products, vectors and matrices, functions, equalities and inequalities, graphical representations, differential calculus, integral calculus, infinite series, vector analysis, differential equations, Laplace and Fourier transforms, optimization, probability and statistics. In general, these subjects are discussed in a good style and the reader is told clearly what MATLAB can do and what it cannot do. One of the few regrettable points is that sparse matrices are simply ignored in the book. This leads to a bad interpretation of the function ``eigs'' in \S 19.5. The aim of this function is not to compute integer eigenvalues but rather special eigenvalues of sparse matrices or of matrices \(A\) for which only the map from \(x\to Ax\) can be programmed. The book contains very few misprints. Rather amusingly, the author writes a few times ``MATHCAD'' instead of ``MATLAB'' (e.g. on pages 261, 263 and 407). The book is not intended for the mathematician or computer scientist who is interested in advanced programming in MATLAB. For example, the use of global variables is not discussed. Similarly, the use of variable length input (and output) arguments lists is not discussed, though this is really a very interesting feature in advanced programming. Linking with C -- and Fortran programs is not discussed either (though there is a hint in Chapter 15). The command ``error'' is not referred to.