594 Chapter 10. Software for Data Analysis
C.2 Data Acquisition and Import Capabilities
MATLAB allows the user to import data from different sources in a variety of
formats, such as
ASCII text file,
Microsoft Excel file,
Image file in any standard graphics format,
Sound file, and
Video file.
The user can also access other types of binary files, files from web pages, and
XML files through low-level functions available in MATLAB.
MATLAB also has a data acquisition tool box, which can be used to acquire
data from hardware devices. Examples of such devices are computer’s standard
communication ports and custom designed computer interface cards. The online
data acquisition coupled with real time analysis libraries and database support make
MATLAB a complete data acquisition, analysis, and storage system.
C.3 Data Analysis Capabilities
As mentioned before MATLAB has a number of toolboxes to handle essentially any
data analysis task. However the standard package also has most of the commonly
used data analysis functions, such as
Descriptive Statistics,
Curve Fitting,
Correlation,
Filtering,
Fourier transformation,
Matrix analysis,
Interpolation, and
Smoothing.C.4 Visualization Capabilities
MATLAB has very strong and user friendly plotting libraries to produce publica-
tion level plots. It also has an interactive environment where users can modify and
create graphics. This environment can be used to change the shape and properties of
any object on the figure. One can also drag-and-drop new data sets onto an existing
figure. Furthermore, operations like zooming in/out, rotating, and panning are also
available.
Any type of two and three dimensional graph can be produced in MATLAB
through a few mouse clicks or by writing a few lines of code. The figures generated
are of very high quality and ready for publication. The two dimensional plotting
functions available in MATLAB include the following.