MATLAB- Fantastic program for visualizing data and complex modelling.
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I have been using MATLAB for quite a long time and we use it quite frequently at Broward. It is constantly used within our research groups and by quite a lot of undergrad and postgraduate students. For the most part, we use the software for simulation purposes and we also interface MATLAB when teaching other program languages such as Fortran, as the engine allows for this. The interface is incredibly intuitive and the modeling of differential equations/integrals allows us to quickly and efficiently process large amounts of data in a short time. Currently, we are running a machine learning course, which teaches the students how to visualize and build neural networks, so building prototypes of these models helps develop an underlying understanding of the mathematics involved.
Pros
- MATLAB is great at providing in-depth models and simulations with very little coding, this is particularly useful to non-coders and potential data scientists who know very little or basic understanding of coding languages. The drag and drop components of the software are ideal and its simplicity allows the user to really understand the math behind the simulations running.
- It is fantastic for visualizing data, without being able to properly visualize data is almost useless, MATLAB allows the users to quickly dissect and understand how different data sets affect different variables and so forth.
- It has a wide range of supportive documentation and the online community is very active and engaged. If you ever have any problems, you can always count on someone being there to help you understand what is going on.
Cons
- I believe the software is quite expensive, so it is not open to independent parties which is a shame as it is fantastic at what it does, if they could find a way to include independent people rather than mass groups, I think it would really benefit a lot of people.
- The responsiveness of the software is not always the best and this can be very hindering to the user, especially when working with sensitive data/models.
- MATLAB is inefficient in some of its works and sometimes it is not the best tool for the job, there are times when it is quicker to write scripts in Python that run and work much better than they would ever do in MATLAB.
Likelihood to Recommend
There are many specific scenarios where MATLAB is well suited. Researchers
need fast modeling and fast prototypes for data. In a research
environment, new ideas are always popping up so it is important to be
able to distinguish quickly what methods are needed and how to get things
done. Mostly we know in advance what methods will be successful in our
modeling so the only caveat we have is programming time- this is not too
much of a problem, because a lot of time is saved as everything needed
to run a successful simulation is already outlined in MATLAB variety of
functions. I think situations, where MATLAB is less suited, are for people which already can code really well-
or already know languages that outperform MATLAB in certain scenarios,
such as Python. As a general program language, it often un-performs and
although does integrate into other languages such as Fortran, it is quirky
and quite slow for many a task.
