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1.7: Chapter Review

  • Page ID
    85851
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    This chapter provided an overview of the modeling process, including abstraction, analysis and simulation, measurement, and validation.

    It also introduced MATLAB, the programming language we’ll use to write simulations. So far, we’ve seen variables and values, arithmetic operations, and mathematical functions.

    Here are a few terms from this chapter you might want to remember.

    The interpreter is the program that reads and executes MATLAB or code. It prints a prompt to indicate that it’s waiting for you to type a command, which is a line of code executed by the interpreter.

    An operator is a symbol, like * or +, that represents a mathematical operation. An operand is a number or variable that appears in an expression along with operators. An expression is a sequence of operands and operators that specifies a mathematical computation and yields a value.

    A function is a named computation; for example, log10 is the name of a function that computes logarithms in base 10. A function call is a command that causes a function to execute and compute a result. An argument is an expression that appears in a function call to specify the value the function operates on.

    A variable is a named value. An assignment statement is a command that creates a new variable (if necessary) and gives it a value. A workspace is a set of variables and their values.

    Finally, a string is a value that consists of a sequence of characters (as opposed to a number).

    In the next chapter, you’ll start writing longer programs and learn about floating-point numbers.


    This page titled 1.7: Chapter Review is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Allen B. Downey (Green Tea Press) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.