Matlab has been called "the lingua franca for the exchange of software and algorithms," rapidly displacing Fortran from that position due to its interactive interface, reliable algorithmic foundation, fully extensible environment, and computational speed.

In addition to the basic Matlab package, UCS has licensed the Simulink package for simulating dynamical systems with a graphical interface/ block diagram scheme, and the following "Toolboxes" [collections of additional specialized functions]:

	Signal Processing
	Image Processing
	Control Theory
	Neural Networks
	Statistics
	Partial Differential Equations

Reliability and Robustness: Excellent

Matlab is a computer program for people doing numerical computation. It began as a "MATrix LABoratory" program, intended to provide interactive access to the famous LINPACK and EISPACK libraries of state-of-the-art numerical routines. These are carefully tested, high-quality general-use packages for solving linear equations and eigenvalue problems. The goal of Matlab was to enable scientists to use matrix-based techniques to solve problems, without having to write programs in traditional languages like C and Fortran. More capabilities have been added as time has passed, in particular outstanding graphics support for X windows.

User Friendliness: Fair

A well-organized Mosaic-based help system is available for the Xwindows version, which make it easier to discover new commands. It offers the same information as the regular help system, in an html format, with additional graphical examples.

Matlab Help is as follows:

>> help plot

PLOT   Plot vectors or matrices.

PLOT(X,Y) plots vector X versus vector Y. If X or Y is a matrix,
        then the vector is plotted versus the rows or columns of the matrix,
        whichever line up.

        PLOT(Y) plots the columns of Y versus their index.
        If Y is complex, PLOT(Y) is equivalent to PLOT(real(Y),imag(Y)).
        In all other uses of PLOT, the imaginary part is ignored.

        Various line types, plot symbols and colors may be obtained with
        PLOT(X,Y,S) where S is a 1, 2 or 3 character string made from
        the following characters:

               y     yellow        .     point
               m     magenta       o     circle
               c     cyan          x     x-mark
               r     red           +     plus
               g     green         -     solid
               b     blue          *     star
               w     white         :     dotted
               k     black         -.    dashdot
                                   --    dashed

        For example, PLOT(X,Y,'c+') plots a cyan plus at each data point.

        PLOT(X1,Y1,S1,X2,Y2,S2,X3,Y3,S3,...) combines the plots defined by
        the (X,Y,S) triples, where the X's and Y's are vectors or matrices
        and the S's are strings.

        For example, PLOT(X,Y,'y-',X,Y,'go') plots the data twice, with a
        solid yellow line interpolating green circles at the data points.

        The PLOT command, if no color is specified, makes automatic use of
        the colors specified by the axes ColorOrder property.  The default
        ColorOrder is listed in the table above for color systems where the
        default is yellow for one line, and for multiple lines, to cycle
        through the first six colors in the table.  For monochrome systems,
        PLOT cycles over the axes LineStyleOrder property.

        PLOT returns a column vector of handles to LINE objects, one
        handle per line.

        The X,Y pairs, or X,Y,S triples, can be followed by
        parameter/value pairs to specify additional properties
        of the lines.

        See also SEMILOGX, SEMILOGY, LOGLOG, GRID, CLF, CLC, TITLE,
        XLABEL, YLABEL, AXIS, AXES, HOLD, and SUBPLOT.

Matlab has an active international newsgroup, comp.soft-sys.matlab. Users can always subscribe to and post their questions there. Matlab users can also turn to their colleagues who are familiar with Matlab software for help, or post inquiries to the newsgroup iu.statmath.

To subscribe to The MathWorks Newsletter (quarterly publication) and The MATLAB News Digest (distributed via email, approximately monthly), send e-mail to subscribe@mathworks.com including your name, university, address, phone number, email address, and license or serial number (obtained by entering "ver" at the Matlab prompt) .

Users of UCS's Matlab licenses should contact the Stat/Math Center for Support. Registered Matlab license owners can contact the vendor directly with the number provided with their license agreement: phone 508-653-2452 or send e-mail to support@mathworks.com.

You can also use your WWW browser to access a *huge* archive of Matlab FAQs -- follow the connections from the Stat/Math Web server, or connect directly to URL http://www.mathworks.com; an anonymous ftp site is also maintained, at ftp.mathworks.com.