Well I'd like to welcome to the future. In 2016, two years after we recorded the original videos for this course MathWorks brought out an entirely new way to get matlab. In this video we're going to run Matlab, but you got to get it to run it, and get it you've now got two options. One, you can use an installed version like one of these over here on my computer desktop or two, you can use an online version. Option one up here requires that you download and installation package, and use it to install matlab on your computer. If you're lucky enough to have Matlab installed on your computer already as I do, you're in great shape because you don't have to download or install anything you can get started immediately. If on the other hand you do not have an installed version of Matlab on your computer, and you do not have a license to allow you to get one, you are still lucky and you're still in great shape because with option two, the online version, you never have to download or install anything. And the very nice people at MathWorks have decided that just for enrolling in this course, they're going to give you a free 12-week license to use their online version and 250 megabytes of space to store programs. You can find out how to get that online version in the resource section of this course. MathWorks has put in a huge amount of work to make this option available to you, but it should take you only about five minutes of work to get it. So, there are two groups of you taking this course. Some of you will be using an installed version of Matlab like these up here, and some of you will be using the online version. So, which version are we going to be using in this course? Well, depends on where we are. I'm not talking about where we are in the world, which for me is the Vanderbilt's School of Engineering in Nashville Tennessee. No, I'm talking about where we are in time. Right now, as I'm recording this video it's March 2018, and in this video, I'm going to introduce you to the latest installed and online versions of Matlab both of which are called R2018a. In fact, you can see the icon for the very latest installed version right up here at the top R2018a. I'll open that up in a minute and I'll also open up Matlab online and compare the two, and give you an introduction to them. Then we're going to get in my time machine which I've got warmed up and hovering right behind me in the studio. Let me see, yeah he is back there, and it's going to take us back to 2014 when we began recording these lectures, and while we're there you'll see me using the latest version available back then which has been sitting right here on my computer for four years waiting for me to use it again my good old trusty matlab R2014b. Look at that, that is exactly how I lifted back there in early 2015 when I recorded the last segment of lesson eight, which you will be watching in week nine. Thanks old friend, but you know right now we're going to let you rest just a little while longer. I don't have the heart to tell it, but except for this little cameo we're not going to use it at all for any of the new videos. We're seven releases passed and now it's days away over. But, I do take it out for a spin every once in a while it still runs great. This brings me to a very important point about Matlab. That four year old version of Matlab's almost identical to the model you'll see in the showrooms today. In fact, as you follow along with me, and do the exercises that we recorded with it almost four years ago, you might not notice any difference at all. Even if you're using the latest version, sure each new version is an improvement, but the Matlab language stabilized many years ago, so the changes are incremental and that's a very good thing for three reasons: First you want to write programs in a language that is rapidly changing because the programs you write today might not work tomorrow. Second, if Matlab will change significantly, I'd have to record 12 hours of videos all over again, that would make me cranky and crabby, and you wouldn't like me when I'm cranky or crabby. Third, you wonderful people out there who are writing Chinese, Dutch, Korean, Romanian, and Spanish subtitles for us would have to do that all over again. You know what that's a lot of work, and I are very grateful to you for doing that. Hey, wait! [FOREIGN] [inaudible]. Of course even stable languages can get new features, and when features are added to matlab, we think you should know about we'll add them to the course. In fact, we're adding a few good ones to the videos toward the end of this course this very year. So, I've got three versions on my desktop, and you can have as many versions of Matlab as you want or can afford installed at the same time, and if you want to hear your computer's fan run, you can fire them all up at the same time. But, they're all backward compatible meaning that the old code will run in the newer versions, and really there's no reason to have more than one. Unless you're a total matlab nerd or totally cool matlab instructor, and of course we know which one I am. How's that so? Okay. Fine, that's fine. I assume you know what nerd means right yeah, Naturally Endowed for Research and Development N-E-R-D. And of course you know that NERDs are the people that make our worlds such a nice place to live in. They find cures for diseases, they launch rockets, provide the Internet, invent GPS, cell phone, and that computer you're looking at right now, and I just thought of something since you're on that computer, taking this course learning Matlab, you might be a nerd of yourself. Well, if you are a member of a very exclusive society and you might even be a genius enhanced with engineering know-how, and an acronym for that too. But, I digress let's just double-click this matlab R2018a icon, and fire this baby up. And we'll have a look at it. That launches matlab. A Window opens up to show the Matlab integrated environment, which is usually referred to simply as the Matlab environment or as the Matlab desktop. This desktop is perched on top of your computer's desktop, and that's where you'll type all your Matlab commands and where matlab will show you all your results. When you first open it up after its installation this Getting Started link shows up here, you can check this out, but we don't need it for this course we need all the space we can get in the desktop so I'm going to click this little x and dismissing. You can move the window around, and reshape it, and I'm going to do that to make room for Matlab online above it. That's right, the name of the online version is appropriate enough "Matlab Online" as really pretty slick. To run it all you need is a Mathworks account and a web browser, and then you can use it on any computer, anywhere, anytime as often as you want. To run Matlab online I'll just launch a browser like Chrome but since I'm on a Mac maybe I should use Safari. Well, just to show we are not play favorites, let's flip a coin. Head it's Chrome, tail is Safari. All right. Chrome it is. I'll type in this address https://matlab.mathworks.com hit return. And here we are at the login prompt. It's a good idea to bookmark this site, I'll do that, because you'll be coming back to it a lot. A time my login Well it's actually already there, because Google has remembered it, and it's remembered my password too. Use password for that, and then I come down here. I'm just hit Return or hit login I think I'll just hit return, and after a few seconds there it is. Matlab online. This is its default layout but I prefer a different layout, which I can get by going up here and clicking on layout, and then clicking three column, and I want to adjust the window. So, we can see Matlab online and Matlab install at the same time as chess. I want to give them the same amount of space each course I don't want to play favorites here. Only which one you got. Here we go, but wait before we do another thing you need to get your version of Matlab going too. You got to do that right now, because you need it so you can do everything I do ride along with me at the same time. You can't learn by just watching me. You have to do everything I do, pausing me whenever you need to do so I don't get ahead of you. It's like a yoga class, you won't get any benefit from just watching me do exercises. If you have either Matlab online or an installed version of matlab already great. If you don't, then you need to stop right now and follow the written instructions that we posted in the resource section of the course website to start your free 12-week license of Matlab online. And so you won't miss anything I'll In this video right now, and wait until you get setup. When you have your matlab desktop open and ready, you can start me back up in the next video, we'll put it to work.
