Tutorials on Analysis of Data using MATLAB
The tutorials below are aimed at freshman engineering students using Student Version of MATLAB, i.e. with only the symbolic toolbox. To be sure, MATLAB sells excellent toolboxes on statistics and curve fitting, but these are not included in the Student Version. Furthermore, while convenient, the programs in these toolboxes are generally too “user friendly.” That is, they require little thought or understanding.
The tutorials use bold italics to indicate icons or menu items to click on and >> blue for MATLAB commands that must be executed.
The first five tutorials use data for the vapor pressure of carbon monoxide versus temperature as an example. These data are first fit with polynomials, next with the Clapeyron equation, and finally with the Antoine equation. The following tutorials are intended to be performed in the order indicated, with each building on the work done in the preceding.
The next tutorial deals with descriptive statistics for data on a single variable, including the mean, standard deviation, histograms, cumulative distribution plots, skewness, kurtosis and confidence limits for the mean. It ends with a MATLAB function that calculates all of these, except a histogram, for a given set of data.
The next tutorial deals with comparison of means of two populations using samples from those populations.
Last modified May 14, 2010
Contact Professor Wilcox with your comments, suggestions and questions. Are there other topics you'd like to see covered?