(Note to teachers: If you have a student who always gets the integral correct but shows no working and never includes the constant of integration – now you know why). It misses off the constant of integration but this is the standard behaviour for almost all symbolic integrators and so isn’t anything to worry about. It even has the power to evaluate integrals symbolically – something that I wish I had access to when I was in high school. It will also give the answer to our first quadratic exactly – which is nice. With the symbolic toolbox, however, calculations such as this are trivial thanks to the solve command If, on the other hand, you wanted to solve the general quadratic a*x^2+b*x+c=0 in terms of a,b and c then you are out of luck using MATLAB on its own. The syntax may look at bit minging at first sight but it does the job and does it efficiently. For example, if you want to solve the quadratic equation x^2 -2*x -5=0 numerically then basic MATLAB can help you. The base MATLAB package is strictly numerical and has no support for the symbolic manipulation of equations. If you are new to MATLAB then maybe a quick explanation is in order here. Just over a couple of weeks ago, The Mathworks released the latest version of their main product, MATLAB 2008b, which includes a completely new version of their Symbolic Toolbox.
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