Preface to the Second Edition

With this revision I have upgraded the book to a \Matlab 5 level. There are about 60 new problems and a few new topics.

In Chapter 1 there is a new section on structure arrays and cell arrays and a new section on how to produce more informative plots. A brief treatment of trigonometric interpolation is now included in Chapter 2. (There is a follow-up FFT solution to the problem in Chapter 5.)

Chapter 5 includes a brief discussion of sparse arrays and this permits a limited study of sparse methods for linear equations and least squares in Chapters 6 and 7. In these chapters the block matrix material is enriched with the use of cell arrays.

The Chapter 8 orbit problem solutions now make use of simple structures and this simplifies the presentation.

The Chapter 9 treatment of ode23 is a little more detailed.

I am deeply indebted to Carl de Boor and Mike Overton for their numerous suggestions on how to improve the First Edition. Rob Corliss, Tim Davis, and Dan Drucker have also been kind enough to offer advice.

My staff assistant Cindy Robinson and my wife Marian continue to make things like book writing possible. With two laugh-a-minute types like these I am never more than thirty seconds away from a good joke, often about book writing!

Finally and with great pleasure, I rededicate the text to Cleve Moler. I am more thankful than ever for Cleve's many contributions to scientific computing.