h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: MATLAB - the Programming Language - A18023762
Author: Alex 'Tufty' Ashman [!] - U566116


They made me learn about this for my Medical Physics project

Alex

Hi Alex

I've worked in IT for 3n + 1 years and I've never heard of MATLAB, so I guess it's never seriously broken into commercial markets.

The article looks fine to me.

You mention that code 'could also be expanded to accept a whole matrix of numbers'. Is this a distinguishing facility of the language, and if so, is it this which led to it being named Matrix Laboratory?

Icy

I'm not sure if that's a distinguishing feature - I've added a sentence in the first paragraph

I can't comment on content, because that's way beyond my understanding, so here's for now:

since having become a widely used in teaching and research - become widely...


would need store each value in the - need to store

Bel

Sorted

Oh pants - just noticed that the code won't work because the integers will have decimal places equal to zero (eg 3 --> 3.000). I'll have to think of another way round the problem.

You mean you haven't tested it?

It's a interesting point, as I guess nobody else here will have the ability to run your code. Do we take you on trust that it won't delete the entire contents of our hard drive?

Sorted it now

I hadn't had the chance to test it until now, and no, it doesn't have the capability to do anything as useful as destroy your harddrive, Icy

No, I rely on Windows XP to do that for me.

On second thoughts - this is all a cleverly-contrived plan to link to your Blue Screen of Death entry, isn't it - be honest.

I recently upset my boss by telling him that what he stared at was the Blue Screen of Death

It does indeed work now - here's a sort of proof:

556810874, 278405437, 835216312, 417608156
208804078, 104402039, 313206118, 156603059
469809178, 234904589, 704713768, 352356884
176178442, 88089221, 264267664, 132133832
66066916, 33033458, 16516729, 49550188, 24775094
12387547, 37162642, 18581321, 55743964, 27871982
13935991, 41807974, 20903987, 62711962, 31355981
94067944, 47033972, 23516986, 11758493, 35275480
17637740, 8818870, 4409435, 13228306, 6614153
19842460, 9921230, 4960615, 14881846, 7440923
22322770, 11161385, 33484156, 16742078, 8371039
25113118, 12556559, 37669678, 18834839, 56504518
28252259, 84756778, 42378389, 127135168, 63567584
31783792, 15891896, 7945948, 3972974, 1986487
5959462, 2979731, 8939194, 4469597, 13408792
6704396, 3352198, 1676099, 5028298, 2514149
7542448, 3771224, 1885612, 942806, 471403, 1414210
707105, 2121316, 1060658, 530329, 1590988, 795494
397747, 1193242, 596621, 1789864, 894932, 447466
223733, 671200, 335600, 167800, 83900, 41950, 20975
62926, 31463, 94390, 47195, 141586, 70793, 212380,
106190, 53095, 159286, 79643, 238930, 119465, 358396
179198, 89599, 268798, 134399, 403198, 201599, 604798
302399, 907198, 453599, 1360798, 680399, 2041198,
1020599, 3061798, 1530899, 4592698, 2296349, 6889048
3444524, 1722262, 861131, 2583394, 1291697, 3875092
1937546, 968773, 2906320, 1453160, 726580, 363290
181645, 544936, 272468, 136234, 68117, 204352, 102176
51088, 25544, 12772, 6386, 3193, 9580, 4790, 2395, 7186
3593, 10780, 5390, 2695, 8086, 4043, 12130, 6065, 18196
9098, 4549, 13648, 6824, 3412, 1706, 853, 2560, 1280
640, 320, 160, 80, 40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1

Alex

Is that the output from the test run, or the stack dump from when it failed?

What is this, an operating system? There's no dumps or dev/null's... What you see is the output, with commas painstakingly added.

If you had to add the commas then you didn't format the output correctly

Yes, but formatting the output would make the code more complicated, whereas examples are supposed to do *something but be completely useless and computationally disastrous.

It would be computationally disastrous if you were to disprove the 3n + 1 conjecture using this program. Wouldn't it run for ever?

Yes, unless you were to press Ctrl + Break