Getting started with Matlab

Matlab is useful for exploring ideas and prototyping programs. It is a popular programming environment for machine learning computer vision, especially among those who do not have lots of experience in C/C++ because it allows one to focus more on the problem and less on the code. It has significant drawbacks for writing large programs or when performance is critical. It is also a "product" which needs to be purchased and installed before it can be used. Nonetheless, it is a useful tool which machine learning and computer vision students should be exposed to. Some future assignments may either require Matlab, or be optionally done in Matlab.

Matlab is installed on the UA CS Linux machines (the path is /usr/local/bin). Normally, to begin, you just type "matlab" at the shell prompt. For example, you may want to use the machines gr01 through gr08 in GS 920, either on-site, or remotely. If your DISPLAY environment is properly set, the default behavior is the GUI interface. Otherwise, you will get the the command line interface. You may find that the GUI is slow to start up, and painfully slow to use over a modem. For a faster Matlab (but without some of the display features, probably including plotting), you can try

        matlab -nodisplay -nojvm

To become familiar with Matlab, you could read this short Matlab tutorial or this longer Matlab primer. The complete documentation for Matlab is also available on the web. All Matlab commands are documented with Matlab's help system. For example, if you want to know how the svd function works, type help svd. You can also get help on all the built in operators and even the language itself. Typing help gives a list of help topics.