Mastering MATLAB 5: A Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference

Rating:
Summary: Covers MATLAB basics well, poor on programming applications.
Review: I bought a number of copies of this book for our departmental library. It serves quite well as a general reference on MATLAB usage. The sections on matrix manipulations, graphics and strings are fine. However, the section on Control Flow is very poor. The power of MATLAB is that it provides an extremely efficient, matrix-based, programming language. This is glossed over in one short chapter, with only trivial illustrative examples. I still refer my students to the book but, for motivating examples, I also refer them to the book by Charles van Loan.

Rating:
Summary: Very good reference
Review: I'm an experience programmer and I learned Matlab from this book but I never really read it. Typically, I used it as a reference, looking up a function when I needed it. I'm just amazed that after 1 year (of full time matlab programming, I wrote a matlab toolbox myself), I'm still using the book. You find what you're looking for easylly from the index. It's clear, short but very deep and detailled and the chapter are cleverly organized. That's the best programming book I've been using. I would like all of them to be like that.

Rating:
Summary: Mastering MATLAB 5 Lacks Depth
Review: This book might be great for new users to MATLAB, but even then, I am not sure that it is much more help then the text or the help files that come with the software. I was hoping for a reference that went in to more detail than the help files and covered more advanced topics or commands.