The use of calculation software has become absolutely essential in the scientific field since the 1970s, both for technicians, engineers, and researchers.

This course introduces you to a calculation software called Matlab, which is one of the most popular choices for quantitative analysis in fields such as engineering, statistics, economics, and artificial intelligence, to name just a few.

Matlab was developed by the MathWorks company. MATLAB (MATrix LABoratory) is an interactive programming environment for scientific computation, programming, and data visualization. Free alternatives exist, such as Scilab or Octave.

For numerical computation, Matlab is much more concise than older languages like C, Pascal, Fortran, or Basic. For example, there's no need to program loops to individually modify elements of a matrix. The matrix can be treated as a simple variable. Matlab also includes a powerful graphical interface and a wide variety of scientific algorithms.

This course material is intended for first-year students in the common foundational mathematics and computer science program. The main objective of this course is to provide the most relevant basic concepts to master the Matlab calculation software.