Introduction to MATLAB
Please feel free to raise any comments or issues on the website’s Github repository. Pull requests are very much appreciated.
Description
A quick tutorial on MATLAB and the most important features that one uses in Macroeconomics or for Dynare.
Topics
- Default layout of MATLAB
- Interacting with the command window
- Interacting with the workspace window
- Command history
- Preferences
- Creating scripts
- Basic computations
- Calling built-in functions
- MATLAB is a matrix language, i.e. check your dimensions!
- Element-wise computations
- Comments
- Matrix left divide to solve systems of linear equations
- Looking at the help of a function
- Functions can have both several inputs as well as several outputs
- Difference between mldivide and inv
- MATLAB is case sensitive
- Different types of variables
- Additional toolboxes
- Toolboxes commonly used in Macroeconomics and Econometrics
- How to look for and get help
- Initialize arrays of any dimension
- Change values in arrays
- Empty vector can delete stuff in arrays
- Writing user functions
- Very basic plot
- if statements
- Difference between error and warning
- for loop
- Terminate busy computations
References
- Brandimarte (2006, Appendix A) - Numerical Methods in Finance & Economics A MATLAB based Introduction - Paolo Brandimarte
- Miranda, Fackler (2002, Appendix B) - Applied Computational Economics and Finance