MATLAB
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| Developer(s) | Mathworks |
|---|---|
| Stable release | R2011B / 2011-08-14 |
| Release available at UA | R2010B |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux |
| Type | Numerical computation |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www.mathworks.com/products/matlab/ |
If you do numerical analysis and you don't know MATLAB® yet, you will probably want to test it. MATLAB® is an integrated technical computing environment that combines numeric computation, advanced graphics and visualization, and a high-level programming language. The language self is JIT compiled. For quickly testing and plotting things without needing to write your own graphical library, MATLAB® is second to at most Octave and Scilab (see below).
Contents |
How to get it
Students
Employees
- Contact Lieve Willems. You'll get an account on www.mathworks.com with your UA e-mail address and a generated password.
- Login on www.mathworks.com and follow the procedure (as outlined below).
After clicking Continue, the download_agent may take care of the rest of the operation. Note, however, that this program does not work in all operating systems. If your browser offers you to save a file named download_agent on your computer, things are not working automatically. Don't save the file, and proceed with the manual download.
Automatic download via the download_agent
Manual download
Choose all the packages you may wish to use and download them into a specific folder of your computer. For any more details see the instructions on the MathWorks page.
Installation
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux
Installation instructions are outlined in the last step of the online (manual) download instructions of www.mathworks.com.
It is recommended to have a running internet connection during installation to be able to activate the copy right away. This is necessary to have it working. Also make sure to execute the install script with sufficient rights (e.g., as root when aiming for an install in /usr/local/ or /opt/).
Alternatives to MATLAB®
In environments where MATLAB® is not automatically provided to you, you might be forced to spend a LOT of money to get it. Think twice before you develop a huge piece of software for which you might be forced to pay to let it actually run sometime in the future. In the free software world, there are two prominent alternatives to MATLAB®:
Scilab (Cross-platform)
- Latest version: 5.2.0
- How to get it: free download at the official website.
Developed at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, Scilab is rather a local and not a community project. With the recent advent of Scilab 5.0, a new (GPL-compliant) licence was introduced to replace the old, home-brewn one. It can be expected that the development of the software will pick up even more speed than it already has
GNU Octave (Linux)
- Latest version: 3.2.3.
- How to get it: free download at the official website.
A GNU project making use of all sort of well developed FOSS programs and libraries (such as gnuplot) to match MATLAB®. There is no GUI, but strictly speaking, MATLAB® doesn't provide you with a lot more than a command line and an editor either. You do have replacements for those on your machine, I suppose?
R project (cross platform)
- Latest version: 2.15.
- How to get it: free download at the official website.
R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics with various extensions (e.g. machine learning, engineering, ...). It is a GNU project which is similar to the S language. A good GUI is provided as an Eclipse plugin: StatET. Alternatively, you can use one of the editors provided by SciViews as well.
