Matrices and Arrays

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Some useful commands
• clc; Clear command window. (home)

• clear; Clear variables and functions from memory.

• format; Set output format. Short (4 digits) Long (15 digits)

• Try : help disp;

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Creating variable at the command line
• Create a variable named 'a' by typing this statement at the command line
(>>):
• >> a= 1 ;

• When you do not specify an output variable, MATLAB uses the variable ans,
short for answer, to store the results of your calculation.

• >> sin(a)

• ans =

• 0.8415

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 The Workspace window (on the right)
shows all the variables currently in the
workspace.

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Matrices and Arrays
• All MATLAB variables are multidimensional arrays, no matter what type
of data.

2D – Array 3D – Array

Array Creation : >> a = [1 2 3 4] ; creating a row vector

c = [3+4i, 4+3j; -i, 10j] ; Array with complex numbers

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Examples (Try it on MATLAB command window)
• Creating a matrix that has multiple rows, separate the rows with
semicolons.
• >> a = [1 3 5; 2 4 6; 7 8 10]

• Functions : ones, zeros, eye

• z = zeros(5,1) ; %create a 5-by-1 column vector of zeros.

• O=ones(1,5); %create a 1-by-5 row vector of ones.

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Matrix and Array Operations
• MATLAB allows you to process all the values in a matrix using a single
arithmetic operator or function.

• >> O = O+10;
• >> sin(a);

• To transpose (flip – interchanging rows and columns) a matrix, use a

single quote (‘):

• Matrix multiplication : a*a

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Dot operator (.)
• Given : >> a=[1 2 3;4 5 6; 7 8 9];

• Try : >> a.*a

• To perform element-wise multiplication rather than matrix multiplication,

use the .* operator.

• Try : >> a./3 ; AND >> a.^2;

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Concatenation (append or join)

• A=[a,a] ; concatenating ‘a’ with ‘a’ horizontally.

• C = horzcat(a,a);

• A=[a;a] ; concatenating ‘a’ with ‘a’ vertically.

• C = vertcat(a,a);

• The pair of square brackets [ ] is the concatenation operator.

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Saving and Loading Workspace Variables
• Save variables in your workspace to a MATLAB specific file format
called a MAT-file using the save command.

• To save the workspace to a MAT-file named filename.mat, use the

command:
• >> save filename
• >> load filename

• Saving the variable "k" to a new MAT-file called justk.mat:

• >> save justk k

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Using Built-in Functions and Constants
• >> a = pi (𝜋)

• https://in.mathworks.com/help/phased/ref/physconst.html

• >> a = sin(30)
• >> a =sin(pi/6)
• >> a = sqrt(16)
• You can perform calculations within the square brackets.
• x = [abs(-4) 4^2];
• y= [sqrt(10) pi^2]

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Creating Evenly-Spaced Vectors
• X = [ 1 2 3 4 ] – Vector contains evenly spaced number

• Shortcut method - X = 1:4 – “:” operator – start_value : end_value

• A = 1:2:10 - start_value : increment : end_value

• linspace(start_value , end_value, number_of_elements)

• If you wanted to create an evenly-spaced vector from 1 to 2π with

100 elements, would you use linspace or :?
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Array Creation Functions

• x = rand(2) - output will be a 2-by-2 matrix of random numbers.

• X = ones(1,3) or X = zeros (2,3)

• X = rand(size(X));

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Array Indexing – Single element
• Indexing is used to access selected elements of an array
• A = [1 2 3 4; 5 6 7 8; 9 10 11 12; 13 14 15 16];

• A(row,col)

• Single subscript traverses down each column in order – A(4,2) = A(8)

• What is the output for A(4,5)?

• You can specify elements outside the current dimensions.

• The size of the array increases to accommodate the newcomers.

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Array Indexing – Multiple elements
• To refer to multiple elements of an array, colon operator is used, which
allows you to specify a range of the form start : end.

• Try : A(1:3,2)

• Try : A(3,:)

• Try : A(2,2:end)

• Example : Extract the Third, Sixth, and Eight elements from A.

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Indexing Vectors
• A= [16 5 9 4 2 11 7 14];

• Swap the two halves of v to make a new vector:

• A2 = A([5:8 1:4])

• Extracting portions of an array: A(2:end-1)

• A(1:2:end) % Extract all the odd elements

• A(end:-1:1) % Reverse the order of elements

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Indexing Vectors
• A= [16 5 9 4 2 11 7 14];

• A([2 3 4]) = [10 15 20] % Replace some elements of A

• A([2 3]) = 30 % Replace second and third elements by 30

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Indexing Matrices with Two Subscripts
• A(row_x, col_y) - Extract the element in row_x, column_y

• A(row_n,:) – Extract nth row

• A(:,end) – Extract last column

• A(2:4,1:2)

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Linear Indexing
• When you index into the
matrix A using only one
subscript,
• MATLAB treats A as if its
elements were strung out in a
long column vector, by going
down the columns
consecutively.

• A(14) = A(2,4)
• A([6 12 15]) = 11 15 12

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Linear Indexing
• sub2ind that converts from row and
column subscripts to linear indices.

• idx = sub2ind(size(A), [2 3 4], [1 2 4])

• ans =
• 2 7 16
• A(idx)
• ans =
• 5 7 1

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Logical Indexing
• A(A > 12) extracts all the elements of A that are greater 12 into a logical
array (column vector).

• Many MATLAB functions that start with is return logical arrays and are
very useful for logical indexing.

• B(isnan(B)) = 0 - To replace all NaN elements of the matrix B with zero

• Strvalue(isspace(Strvalue)) = ‘_’ - replace all the spaces in a string

matrix Strvalue with underscores.

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Find function
• Logical indexing is closely related to the find function.

• FIND returns a vector containing the linear indices of each nonzero element
in array X.

• A(A > 5) is equivalent to A(find(A > 5))

• If X is a vector, then find returns a vector with the same orientation as X.

• If X is a multidimensional array, then find returns a column vector of the

linear indices of the result.
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Find function
•X=
• 16 2 3 13
• 5 11 10 8
• 9 7 6 12
• 4 14 15 1

• k = find(X<10,5) ; Find the first five elements that are less than 10
• X(k) ; View the corresponding elements of X.

• SEE - ind2sub - Convert linear indices to subscripts

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Changing Values in Arrays

• A(1,4)=0.5

• A(1,end)=0.2

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Performing Array Operations on Vectors
• Adding a scalar value to all the elements of an array.

• Add/Sub any two arrays of the same size.

• Multiply or divide all the elements of an array by a scalar.

• Basic statistical functions in MATLAB can be applied to a vector to produce a

single output. Max, Min, Sum, Sqrt

• .* operator performs elementwise multiplication and allows to multiply the

corresponding elements of two equally sized arrays.
• Ex : z = [3 4] .* [10 20] = ?
• Try : x = [1 2;3 4;5 6; 7 8].*[1;2;3;4]
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Compatible Array Sizes for Basic Operations
• Two inputs have compatible sizes if, for every dimension, the dimension
sizes of the inputs are either the same or one of them is 1.
• In the simplest cases, two array sizes are compatible if they are the
same or if one is a scalar.
Two inputs which are the same size One input is a scalar

Matrix and column vector with the same number of Column vector, Row vector
rows.

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Multidimensional Arrays
• Creating Multidimensional Arrays
• >> A = [1 2 3; 4 5 6; 7 8 9];
• Add a second page : A(:,:,2) = [10 11 12; 13 14 15; 16 17 18]

• B = cat(3,A,[3 2 1; 0 9 8; 5 3 7])
• The cat function can be a useful tool for building multidimensional
arrays.

• Expand a multidimensional array >> B(:,:,4) = 0

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Accessing Elements
• Try : C = A( : ,[1 3], :)
• Use the index vector [1 3] in the second dimension to access only the first and
last columns of each page of A.

• Try : D = A( 2:3, :, : )
• To find the second and third rows of each page, use the colon operator to create
your index vector.

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Manipulating Arrays - Reshape
B = reshape(A,[6 5])

Use the reshape function to rearrange

the elements of the 3-D array into a 6-
by-5 matrix.
B = 6×5

1 3 5 7 5
9 6 7 5 5
8 5 2 9 3
2 4 9 8 2
0 3 3 8 1
1 0 6 4 3

reshape operates columnwise, creating the new matrix by taking consecutive elements down each
column of A, starting with the first page then moving to the second page.

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Manipulating Arrays
• P1 = permute(M,[2 1 3]) - interchange row and column subscripts on
each page

• P2 = permute(M,[3 2 1]) - interchange row and page subscripts of M.

• M(:,:,1) = [1 2 3; 4 5 6; 7 8 9];
• M(:,:,2) = [0 5 4; 2 7 6; 9 3 1];

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Repeat copies of array
• Create a 3-by-2 matrix whose elements contain the value 10.

• >> A = repmat(10,3,2)

• A = 3×2

• 10 10
• 10 10
• 10 10

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Repeat copies of array
• Example :
• Try : A = diag([100 200 300]);

• Try : B = repmat(A,2,3);

• Example :
• Try : A = [1 2; 3 4];

• Try : B = repmat(A,[2 3 2]);

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Compatible Array Sizes for Basic Operations
• One input is a matrix, and the other is a 3-D array with the same
number of rows and columns.

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Compatible Array Sizes for Basic Operations
• One input is a matrix, and the other is a 3-D array. The dimensions are
all either the same or one of them is 1.
•

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Cell Array
• A cell array is a data type with indexed data containers called cells,
where each cell can contain any type of data.

• Cell arrays commonly contain either text, combinations of text and

numbers, or numeric arrays of different sizes.

• C = {'2017-08-16’, [56 67 78] }

• C(1,3) = {'Hello world’} - Adding new element
• C(2,:) = {'2017-08-17',[58 69 79],'dd’}; - Adding a new row.

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Table Array
• Table array with named variables that can contain different types.
• column-oriented data in variables
• LastName = {'Sanchez';'Johnson';'Li';'Diaz';'Brown'};
• Age = [38;43;38;40;49];
• Employed = logical([1;0;1;0;1]);
• Height = [71;69;64;67;64];
• Weight = [176;163;131;133;119];
• BloodPressure = [124 93; 109 77; 125 83; 117 75; 122 80];

• T = table(LastName,Age,Employed,Height,Weight,BloodPressure);
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Table Array
• meanHeight = mean(T.Height); - Performing calculations

• T.BMI = (T.Weight*0.453592)./(T.Height*0.0254).^2 – Adding a new

column BMI

• T.Properties.Description = 'Patient data, including body mass index

(BMI) calculated using Height and Weight';

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Structure Array
• A structure array is a data type that groups related data using data containers
called fields.
• Each field can contain any type of data.

• Access data in a field using dot notation of the form structName.fieldName.

• Rectangle.L = 10;
• Rectangle.W = 5;
• Rectangle.Area = Rectangle.L * Rectangle.Area

• s = struct(obj) creates a scalar structure with field names and values that
correspond to properties of obj.

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