Topic: MATLAB Matrices
Due: 11:59pm Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Related Reading: Documentation from MathWorks or use the built-in documentation via "Help" in MATLAB

Please make sure you adhere to the policies on academic integrity.

This semester's assignments will be built around a case study of introduce a Matrix class into C++, modeled loosely after the functionality that is inherent to matrices in MATLAB.

For our first assignment, your goal is to review the basic operations that are supported by matrices in MATLAB so that we can begin to plan for what functionality we wish to support in our C++ version. To receive full credit, you must identify at least 15 interesting examples of behaviors that are supported by MATLAB matrices.

You should make sure to find some behaviors that create a new matrix (without having had an existing one), some functions that alter the state of an existing matrix, and some functions that produce a new matrix based upon some computation involving one or more existing matrices. Furthermore, you are required to report on the following MATLAB behaviors:

• modifying a single entry of a matrix
• scalar multiplicaiton
• matrix multiplication
• ones
• size
• max as applied to a two-dimensional matrix
• reshape

Here are the questions you are to answer. Even though you are free to refer to formal documentation for MATLAB, you are to phrase your answers to these questions in your own words.

• Which behavior (give it a simple name, if one is not apparent already)
• What syntax is used by a programmer to invoke this behavior?
• What parameters must be indicated by the programmer, other than the identity of the matrix itself.
• What are the semantics of the behavior? Be as specific as possible. For example, is this a behavior that changes the state of an existing matrix, or does it generate a new matrix as a result while leaving the original matrix unchanged? If it returns information to the caller, what is that information?