Data Types in MATLAB

Name: Data Types in MATLAB
Author: Gabriel Popoola

Learn the different types of data MATLAB works with

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Course: On-Demand

Welcome to the lesson on numeric data types in MATLAB. In MATLAB, there are three general categories of numeric data types. The first is floating point numbers, the second is integers, and the third is unsigned integers. The floating point numbers include double and single precision, whereas both the signed and unsigned integers include 8, 16, 32 and 64 bit values. So in MATLAB, there's various ways to deal with data types. The first way is to define your values in an array. So what I'm gonna do here is create an array a and I'm going to just input random values. And then I'm going to do the same for an array b, but this time I'm going to use decimal values. And next, I'm gonna create an array c and I'm going to use a mixture of decimals and integers. So now I want you to look at the outputs and notice what's happening here. So first for a, as you can see, I define the array and all of the values are integers so there's no decimal places here. And b, I did the same thing, but I'm using decimals. And as you can see here, all the values have decimals. Now the precision is set to four decimal places by default. And so, you know, as you can see here regardless of what we have in the actual array, there's four decimal places. And then for c where it's mixed, even though I have one integer here, it set all of the values to floating point numbers. And so to get more detail about what's going on, I'm gonna use the whos command and I'm gonna run it on a. And so you see the name of the variable were arrays a, it has a size of 1 by 4, 32 bytes and the class is double. When I do the same thing for b, you see the same thing, except it's 1 by 3, it has 24 bytes and the class is double. And then when I do c, it's the same thing. Now if I didn't wanna use a double because that's, you know, a 64 bit floating point number and so it requires more memory, I could single precision instead. And the way I would do that is by casting the arrays into a single precision array. And so in order to do casting, what I would do is type, for instance, a_new and I would set it to single, which is the numeric data type, and then I would put the array a, and it creates a new array that has single for the data type. And so in order to check that, I'll type whos a_new, and then you can see the class here has changed as well as the bytes, even though the number of elements is still the same. But in this particular case, since we're dealing with all of positive integers, there's really no need to use a floating point data type. And so we can actually cast this into an integer. And so I can use an 8 for instance. And now I have a row vector that is comprised of 8 bit integers. And once again, I'll do whos a_new_2. And you can see now it's using even less memory, so it's 4 bytes now. The class is in 8 or 8 bit integer, and it has the same values. And so depending on the type of data that you're working with, especially when memory becomes a concern, you want to make sure that you're casting your arrays into the smallest data type possible that makes sense given your application. This concludes this lesson. Thank you.

Beginner Provider : Gabriel Popoola 3 Lessons · 16m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese

Course Description

In this Beginner MATLAB course, you’ll learn the basics of MATLAB. You’ll receive an overview of the software and programming language, along with the multiple ways MATLAB enables a programmer to accomplish the same task. This course will also cover MATLAB’s relative strengths, weaknesses, and overall utility as compared with other programming languages.

These lessons will cover data types in MATLAB. You’ll learn about the different data types in MATLAB and what distinguishes them. You’ll also learn about data structures in MATLAB that exist outside of arrays and matrices, cells, and characters. After that, you’ll be introduced to string arrays within MATLAB, and how to create and display them.

What You'll Learn

Explain the different data types in MATLAB and what distinguishes each
Identify data structure types other than arrays and matrices that you may find useful
Work with numeric data types in MATLAB
Use characters and strings in MATLAB
Create and display string arrays in MATLAB
Apply structures as data structures in MATLAB

Key Takeaways

This beginner MATLAB course covers the basics of MATLAB and provides an overview of the software and programming language.
MATLAB enables a programmer to accomplish the same task in multiple ways.
The course compares MATLAB's relative strengths, weaknesses, and overall utility with other programming languages.
MATLAB includes data structures that exist outside of arrays and matrices, such as cells and characters.
String arrays in MATLAB can be created and displayed.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

This is a beginner MATLAB course intended for those learning the basics of MATLAB, including its software, programming language, and data types.

What topics does this course cover?

The course covers the different data types in MATLAB and what distinguishes them, data structures outside of arrays and matrices such as cells and characters, and string arrays including how to create and display them. Lessons include Numeric Data Types, Characters and Strings, and Structures.

What skills will I gain from this course?

You will gain skills in MATLAB, data structures, data classification, data manipulation, and related data-structured concepts.

Does the course compare MATLAB to other programming languages?

Yes, the course covers MATLAB's relative strengths, weaknesses, and overall utility as compared with other programming languages.

What are the learning objectives of this course?

The objectives are to explain the different data types in MATLAB and what distinguishes each, and to list data structure types other than arrays and matrices that you may find useful.