Data analysis and statistics are the cornerstones of most quantitative disciplines. MATLAB has many inbuilt commands for calculating statistics from large data-sets. In this unit we will look at some of MATLAB’s inbuilt statistical commands and also use MATLAB to perform some common data analysis techniques. By the end of the unit you should be able to perform simple statistical analyses on data-sets and have gained an understanding of how to use MATLAB to generate various types of random samples. We will also learn how to read data (including images) into MATLAB, how to display these data, how to process these data and how to write the data back to a file.
In order to understand the material in this unit you should know some probability and statistics. We assume that you have an A level understanding of probability and statistics.
The following are suitable introductory reference sources on probability and statistics. Where needed, references for more advanced material will be given.