Elements of Matrix Modeling and Computing with MATLAB

This book is meant to provide “math-on-time” for second-year students of science and engineering and is intended as the text for a two- or three-credit course concurrent with a second semester of calculus.

There are seven basic applications that provide motivation for the mathematics being illustrated: circuits, trusses, mixing tanks, heat conduction, data modeling, motion of a mass, and image filters. The mathematical tools needed to handle these applications are developed quickly. The reader is introduced to complex numbers and basic complex-valued functions, vectors and matrices, curve fitting, linear ordinary differential equations, Laplace and Fourier transform methods, and some computational methods. As is typical for such texts, the emphasis is more on skills than on theory. MATLAB^® is used as the main computing tool.

The twelve-item bibliography includes some standalone web sites and some URLs associated with referenced books. The link to the NASA Mars Rover site seems to be broken.

Although I sometimes cringe at attempts to cram more etiolated mathematical content into an engineering curriculum, I find that the book under review has some redeeming features. For example, data modeling is applied to some interesting examples — the influence of cross-border shopping on the price of goods, the effect of various home attributes (age, the number of bathrooms…) on real estate appraisal, and various population questions. Detailed MATLAB^® function and code files are provided for most applications. In addition to its intended use, this book might serve as a source of some examples/problems for a linear algebra, differential equations, or applied mathematics course.

Henry Ricardo ([email protected]) is Professor of Mathematics at Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York and Secretary of the Metropolitan NY Section of the MAA. His book, A Modern Introduction to Differential Equations, was published by Houghton Mifflin in January, 2002; and he is currently writing a linear algebra text.