Rogel-Salazar introduces two scientific computing software packages--MathWork’s proprietary MATLAB and GNU’s open source Octave--to students of physics, mathematics, statistics, engineering, and any other field that requires computers to solve numerical problems. He covers the essential essentials, vectors and vector operators, matrices and matrix operators, plotting, programming, and MATLAB and Octave in action. An appendix sets out the difference between the two packages. He has tested the examples in the latest versions: MATLAB R2014a and Octave 3.8. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)