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Chapter 1 Introduction to MATLAB This book is an introduction to two subjects: Matlab and numerical computing. This first chapter introduces Matlab by presenting several programs that inves- tigate elementary, but interesting, mathematical problems. If you already have some experience programming in another language, we hope that you can see how Matlab works by simply studying these programs. If you want a more comprehensive introduction, an on-line manual from The MathWorks is available. Select Help in the toolbar atop the Matlab command window, then select MATLAB Help and Getting Started. A PDF version is available under Printable versions. The document is also available from The MathWorks Web site [10]. Many other manuals produced by The MathWorks are available on line and from the Web site. A list of over 600 Matlab-based books by other authors and publishers, in sev- eral languages, is available at [11]. Three introductions to Matlab are of particular interest here: a relatively short primer by Sigmon and Davis [8], a medium-sized, mathematically oriented text by Higham and Higham [3], and a large, comprehen- sive manual by Hanselman and Littlefield [2]. You should have a copy of Matlab close at hand so you can run our sample programs as you read about them. All of the programs used in this book have been collected in a directory (or folder) named NCM (The directory name is the initials of the book title.) You can either start Matlab in this directory or use pathtool to add the directory to the Matlab path. February 15, 2008 1 2 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB 1.1 The Golden Ratio What is the world's most interesting number? Perhaps you like π, or e, or 17. Some people might vote for φ, the golden ratio, computed here by our first Matlab statement. phi = (1 + sqrt(5))/2 This produces phi = 1.6180 Let's see more digits. format long phi phi = 1.61803398874989 This didn't recompute φ, it just displayed 15 significant digits instead of 5. The golden ratio shows up in many places in mathematics; we'll see several in this book. The golden ratio gets its name from the golden rectangle, shown in Figure 1.1. The golden rectangle has the property that removing a square leaves a smaller rectangle with the same shape. φ 1 1 φ−1 Figure 1.1. The golden rectangle. Equating the aspect ratios of the rectangles gives a defining equation for φ: 1 φ−1 = . φ 1 This equation says that you can compute the reciprocal of φ by simply subtracting one. How many numbers have that property? Multiplying the aspect ratio equation by φ produces the polynomial equation φ2 − φ − 1 = 0. 1.1. The Golden Ratio 3 The roots of this equation are given by the quadratic formula: √ 1± 5 φ= . 2 The positive root is the golden ratio. If you have forgotten the quadratic formula, you can ask Matlab to find the roots of the polynomial. Matlab represents a polynomial by the vector of its coefficients, in descending order. So the vector p = [1 -1 -1] represents the polynomial p(x) = x2 − x − 1. The roots are computed by the roots function. r = roots(p) produces r = -0.61803398874989 1.61803398874989 These two numbers are the only numbers whose reciprocal can be computed by subtracting one. You can use the Symbolic Toolbox, which connects Matlab to a computer algebra system, to solve the aspect ratio equation without converting it to a polyno- mial. The equation is represented by a character string. The solve function finds two solutions. r = solve('1/x = x-1') produces r = [ 1/2*5^(1/2)+1/2] [ 1/2-1/2*5^(1/2)] The pretty function displays the results in a way that resembles typeset mathe- matics. pretty(r) produces [ 1/2 ] [1/2 5 + 1/2] [ ] [ 1/2] [1/2 - 1/2 5 ] 4 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The variable r is a vector with two components, the symbolic forms of the two solutions. You can pick off the first component with phi = r(1) which produces phi = 1/2*5^(1/2)+1/2 This expression can be converted to a numerical value in two different ways. It can be evaluated to any number of digits using variable-precision arithmetic with the vpa function. vpa(phi,50) produces 50 digits. 1.6180339887498948482045868343656381177203091798058 It can also be converted to double-precision floating point, which is the principal way that Matlab represents numbers, with the double function. phi = double(phi) produces phi = 1.61803398874989 The aspect ratio equation is simple enough to have closed-form symbolic so- lutions. More complicated equations have to be solved approximately. In Matlab an anonymous function is a convenient way to define an object that can be used as an argument to other functions. The statement f = @(x) 1./x-(x-1) defines f (x) = 1/x − (x − 1) and produces f = @(x) 1./x-(x-1) The graph of f (x) over the interval 0 ≤ x ≤ 4 shown in Figure 1.2 is obtained with ezplot(f,0,4) The name ezplot stands for "easy plot," although some of the English-speaking world would pronounce it "e-zed plot." Even though f (x) becomes infinite as x → 0, ezplot automatically picks a reasonable vertical scale. The statement phi = fzero(f,1) 1.1. The Golden Ratio 5 1/x − (x−1) 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 −1 −2 −3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 x Figure 1.2. f (φ) = 0. looks for a zero of f (x) near x = 1. It produces an approximation to φ that is accurate to almost full precision. The result can be inserted in Figure 1.2 with hold on plot(phi,0,'o') The following Matlab program produces the picture of the golden rectangle shown in Figure 1.1. The program is contained in an M-file named goldrect.m, so issuing the command goldrect runs the script and creates the picture. % GOLDRECT Plot the golden rectangle phi = (1+sqrt(5))/2; x = [0 phi phi 0 0]; y = [0 0 1 1 0]; u = [1 1]; v = [0 1]; plot(x,y,'b',u,v,'b--') text(phi/2,1.05,'\phi') text((1+phi)/2,-.05,'\phi - 1') text(-.05,.5,'1') text(.5,-.05,'1') axis equal axis off set(gcf,'color','white') 6 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The vectors x and y each contain five elements. Connecting consecutive (xk , yk ) pairs with straight lines produces the outside rectangle. The vectors u and v each contain two elements. The line connecting (u1 , v1 ) with (u2 , v2 ) sepa- rates the rectangle into the square and the smaller rectangle. The plot command draws these lines—the x − y lines in solid blue and the u − v line in dashed blue. The next four statements place text at various points; the string '\phi' denotes the Greek letter. The two axis statements cause the scaling in the x and y directions to be equal and then turn off the display of the axes. The last statement sets the background color of gcf, which stands for get current figure, to white. A continued fraction is an infinite expression of the form 1 a0 + 1 . a1 + a2 + a 1 3 +··· If all the ak 's are equal to 1, the continued fraction is another representation of the golden ratio: 1 φ=1+ . 1 + 1+ 1 1 1+··· The following Matlab function generates and evaluates truncated continued frac- tion approximations to φ. The code is stored in an M-file named goldfract.m. function goldfract(n) %GOLDFRACT Golden ratio continued fraction. % GOLDFRACT(n) displays n terms. p = '1'; for k = 1:n p = ['1+1/(' p ')']; end p p = 1; q = 1; for k = 1:n s = p; p = p + q; q = s; end p = sprintf('%d/%d',p,q) format long p = eval(p) format short err = (1+sqrt(5))/2 - p The statement 1.1. The Golden Ratio 7 goldfract(6) produces p = 1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(1+1/(1)))))) p = 21/13 p = 1.61538461538462 err = 0.0026 The three p's are all different representations of the same approximation to φ. The first p is the continued fraction truncated to six terms. There are six right parentheses. This p is a string generated by starting with a single '1' (that's ) goldfract(0) and repeatedly inserting the string '1+1/(' in front and the string ')' in back. No matter how long this string becomes, it is a valid Matlab expression. The second p is an "ordinary" fraction with a single integer numerator and denominator obtained by collapsing the first p. The basis for the reformulation is 1 p+q 1+ p = . q p So the iteration starts with 1 1 and repeatedly replaces the fraction p q with p+q . p The statement p = sprintf('%d/%d',p,q) prints the final fraction by formatting p and q as decimal integers and placing a '/' between them. The third p is the same number as the first two p's, but is represented as a conventional decimal expansion, obtained by having the Matlab eval function actually do the division expressed in the second p. The final quantity err is the difference between p and φ. With only 6 terms, the approximation is accurate to less than 3 digits. How many terms does it take to get 10 digits of accuracy? 8 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB As the number of terms n increases, the truncated continued fraction generated by goldfract(n) theoretically approaches φ. But limitations on the size of the integers in the numerator and denominator, as well as roundoff error in the actual floating-point division, eventually intervene. Exercise 1.3 asks you to investigate the limiting accuracy of goldfract(n). 1.2 Fibonacci Numbers Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci was born around 1170 and died around 1250 in Pisa in what is now Italy. He traveled extensively in Europe and Northern Africa. He wrote several mathematical texts that, among other things, introduced Europe to the Hindu-Arabic notation for numbers. Even though his books had to be tran- scribed by hand, they were widely circulated. In his best known book, Liber Abaci, published in 1202, he posed the following problem: A man put a pair of rabbits in a place surrounded on all sides by a wall. How many pairs of rabbits can be produced from that pair in a year if it is supposed that every month each pair begets a new pair which from the second month on becomes productive? Today the solution to this problem is known as the Fibonacci sequence, or Fibonacci numbers. There is a small mathematical industry based on Fibonacci numbers. A search of the Internet for "Fibonacci" will find dozens of Web sites and hundreds of pages of material. There is even a Fibonacci Association that publishes a scholarly journal, the Fibonacci Quarterly. If Fibonacci had not specified a month for the newborn pair to mature, he would not have a sequence named after him. The number of pairs would simply double each month. After n months there would be 2n pairs of rabbits. That's a lot of rabbits, but not distinctive mathematics. Let fn denote the number of pairs of rabbits after n months. The key fact is that the number of rabbits at the end of a month is the number at the beginning of the month plus the number of births produced by the mature pairs: fn = fn−1 + fn−2 . The initial conditions are that in the first month there is one pair of rabbits and in the second there are two pairs: f1 = 1, f2 = 2. The following Matlab function, stored in the M-file fibonacci.m, produces a vector containing the first n Fibonacci numbers. function f = fibonacci(n) % FIBONACCI Fibonacci sequence % f = FIBONACCI(n) generates the first n Fibonacci numbers. f = zeros(n,1); 1.2. Fibonacci Numbers 9 f(1) = 1; f(2) = 2; for k = 3:n f(k) = f(k-1) + f(k-2); end With these initial conditions, the answer to Fibonacci's original question about the size of the rabbit population after one year is given by fibonacci(12) This produces 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 The answer is 233 pairs of rabbits. (It would be 4096 pairs if the number doubled every month for 12 months.) Let's look carefully at fibonacci.m. It's a good example of how to create a Matlab function. The first line is function f = fibonacci(n) The first word on the first line says this is a function M-file, not a script. The remainder of the first line says this particular function produces one output result, f, and takes one input argument, n. The name of the function specified on the first line is not actually used, because Matlab looks for the name of the M-file, but it is common practice to have the two match. The next two lines are comments that provide the text displayed when you ask for help. help fibonacci produces FIBONACCI Fibonacci sequence f = FIBONACCI(n) generates the first n Fibonacci numbers. The name of the function is in uppercase because historically Matlab was case insensitive and ran on terminals with only a single font. The use of capital letters may be confusing to some first-time Matlab users, but the convention persists. It 10 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB is important to repeat the input and output arguments in these comments because the first line is not displayed when you ask for help on the function. The next line f = zeros(n,1); creates an n-by-1 matrix containing all zeros and assigns it to f. In Matlab, a matrix with only one column is a column vector and a matrix with only one row is a row vector. The next two lines, f(1) = 1; f(2) = 2; provide the initial conditions. The last three lines are the for statement that does all the work. for k = 3:n f(k) = f(k-1) + f(k-2); end We like to use three spaces to indent the body of for and if statements, but other people prefer two or four spaces, or a tab. You can also put the entire construction on one line if you provide a comma after the first clause. This particular function looks a lot like functions in other programming lan- guages. It produces a vector, but it does not use any of the Matlab vector or matrix operations. We will see some of these operations soon. Here is another Fibonacci function, fibnum.m. Its output is simply the nth Fibonacci number. function f = fibnum(n) % FIBNUM Fibonacci number. % FIBNUM(n) generates the nth Fibonacci number. if n <= 1 f = 1; else f = fibnum(n-1) + fibnum(n-2); end The statement fibnum(12) produces ans = 233 The fibnum function is recursive. In fact, the term recursive is used in both a mathematical and a computer science sense. The relationship fn = fn−1 + fn−2 is known as a recursion relation and a function that calls itself is a recursive function. A recursive program is elegant, but expensive. You can measure execution time with tic and toc. Try 1.2. Fibonacci Numbers 11 tic, fibnum(24), toc Do not try tic, fibnum(50), toc Now compare the results produced by goldfract(6) and fibonacci(7). The first contains the fraction 21/13 while the second ends with 13 and 21. This is not just a coincidence. The continued fraction is collapsed by repeating the statement p = p + q; while the Fibonacci numbers are generated by f(k) = f(k-1) + f(k-2); In fact, if we let φn denote the golden ratio continued fraction truncated at n terms, then fn+1 = φn . fn In the infinite limit, the ratio of successive Fibonacci numbers approaches the golden ratio: fn+1 lim = φ. n→∞ fn To see this, compute 40 Fibonacci numbers. n = 40; f = fibonacci(n); Then compute their ratios. f(2:n)./f(1:n-1) This takes the vector containing f(2) through f(n) and divides it, element by element, by the vector containing f(1) through f(n-1). The output begins with 2.00000000000000 1.50000000000000 1.66666666666667 1.60000000000000 1.62500000000000 1.61538461538462 1.61904761904762 1.61764705882353 1.61818181818182 and ends with 1.61803398874990 1.61803398874989 1.61803398874990 1.61803398874989 1.61803398874989 12 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB Do you see why we chose n = 40? Use the up arrow key on your keyboard to bring back the previous expression. Change it to f(2:n)./f(1:n-1) - phi and then press the Enter key. What is the value of the last element? The population of Fibonacci's rabbit pen doesn't double every month; it is multiplied by the golden ratio every month. It is possible to find a closed-form solution to the Fibonacci number recurrence relation. The key is to look for solutions of the form fn = cρn for some constants c and ρ. The recurrence relation fn = fn−1 + fn−2 becomes ρ2 = ρ + 1. We've seen this equation before. There are two possible values of ρ, namely φ and 1 − φ. The general solution to the recurrence is fn = c1 φn + c2 (1 − φ)n . The constants c1 and c2 are determined by initial conditions, which are now conveniently written f0 = c1 + c2 = 1, f1 = c1 φ + c2 (1 − φ) = 1. Exercise 1.4 asks you to use the Matlab backslash operator to solve this 2-by-2 system of simultaneous linear equations, but it is actually easier to solve the system by hand: φ c1 = , 2φ − 1 (1 − φ) c2 = − . 2φ − 1 Inserting these in the general solution gives 1 fn = (φn+1 − (1 − φ)n+1 ). 2φ − 1 This is an amazing equation. The right-hand side involves powers and quo- tients of irrational numbers, but the result is a sequence of integers. You can check this with Matlab, displaying the results in scientific notation. 1.3. Fractal Fern 13 format long e n = (1:40)'; f = (phi.^(n+1) - (1-phi).^(n+1))/(2*phi-1) The .^ operator is an element-by-element power operator. It is not necessary to use ./ for the final division because (2*phi-1) is a scalar quantity. The computed result starts with f = 1.000000000000000e+000 2.000000000000000e+000 3.000000000000000e+000 5.000000000000001e+000 8.000000000000002e+000 1.300000000000000e+001 2.100000000000000e+001 3.400000000000001e+001 and ends with 5.702887000000007e+006 9.227465000000011e+006 1.493035200000002e+007 2.415781700000003e+007 3.908816900000005e+007 6.324598600000007e+007 1.023341550000001e+008 1.655801410000002e+008 Roundoff error prevents the results from being exact integers, but f = round(f) finishes the job. 1.3 Fractal Fern The M-files fern.m and finitefern.m produce the "Fractal Fern" described by Michael Barnsley in Fractals Everywhere [1]. They generate and plot a potentially infinite sequence of random, but carefully choreographed, points in the plane. The command fern runs forever, producing an increasingly dense plot. The command finitefern(n) generates n points and a plot like Figure 1.3. The command 14 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB Figure 1.3. Fractal fern. finitefern(n,'s') shows the generation of the points one at a time. The command F = finitefern(n); generates, but does not plot, n points and returns an array of zeros and ones for use with sparse matrix and image-processing functions. The NCM collection also includes fern.png, a 768-by-1024 color image with half a million points that you can view with a browser or a paint program. You can also view the file with F = imread('fern.png'); image(F) If you like the image, you might even choose to make it your computer desktop background. However, you should really run fern on your own computer to see the dynamics of the emerging fern in high resolution. The fern is generated by repeated transformations of a point in the plane. Let x be a vector with two components, x1 and x2 , representing the point. There are 1.3. Fractal Fern 15 four different transformations, all of them of the form x → Ax + b, with different matrices A and vectors b. These are known as affine transformations. The most frequently used transformation has 0.85 0.04 0 A= , b= . −0.04 0.85 1.6 This transformation shortens and rotates x a little bit, then adds 1.6 to its second component. Repeated application of this transformation moves the point up and to the right, heading toward the upper tip of the fern. Every once in a while, one of the other three transformations is picked at random. These transformations move the point into the lower subfern on the right, the lower subfern on the left, or the stem. Here is the complete fractal fern program. function fern %FERN MATLAB implementation of the Fractal Fern %Michael Barnsley, Fractals Everywhere, Academic Press,1993 %This version runs forever, or until stop is toggled. %See also: FINITEFERN. shg clf reset set(gcf,'color','white','menubar','none', ... 'numbertitle','off','name','Fractal Fern') x = [.5; .5]; h = plot(x(1),x(2),'.'); darkgreen = [0 2/3 0]; set(h,'markersize',1,'color',darkgreen,'erasemode','none'); axis([-3 3 0 10]) axis off stop = uicontrol('style','toggle','string','stop', ... 'background','white'); drawnow p = [ .85 .92 .99 1.00]; A1 = [ .85 .04; -.04 .85]; b1 = [0; 1.6]; A2 = [ .20 -.26; .23 .22]; b2 = [0; 1.6]; A3 = [-.15 .28; .26 .24]; b3 = [0; .44]; A4 = [ 0 0 ; 0 .16]; cnt = 1; tic while ~get(stop,'value') 16 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB r = rand; if r < p(1) x = A1*x + b1; elseif r < p(2) x = A2*x + b2; elseif r < p(3) x = A3*x + b3; else x = A4*x; end set(h,'xdata',x(1),'ydata',x(2)); cnt = cnt + 1; drawnow end t = toc; s = sprintf('%8.0f points in %6.3f seconds',cnt,t); text(-1.5,-0.5,s,'fontweight','bold'); set(stop,'style','pushbutton','string','close', ... 'callback','close(gcf)') Let's examine this program a few statements at a time. shg stands for "show graph window." It brings an existing graphics window forward, or creates a new one if necessary. clf reset resets most of the figure properties to their default values. set(gcf,'color','white','menubar','none', ... 'numbertitle','off','name','Fractal Fern') changes the background color of the figure window from the default gray to white and provides a customized title for the window. x = [.5; .5]; provides the initial coordinates of the point. h = plot(x(1),x(2),'.'); plots a single dot in the plane and saves a handle, h, so that we can later modify the properties of the plot. darkgreen = [0 2/3 0]; defines a color where the red and blue components are zero and the green component is two-thirds of its full intensity. 1.3. Fractal Fern 17 set(h,'markersize',1,'color',darkgreen,'erasemode','none'); makes the dot referenced by h smaller, changes its color, and specifies that the image of the dot on the screen should not be erased when its coordinates are changed. A record of these old points is kept by the computer's graphics hardware (until the figure is reset), but Matlab itself does not remember them. axis([-3 3 0 10]) axis off specifies that the plot should cover the region −3 ≤ x1 ≤ 3, 0 ≤ x2 ≤ 10, but that the axes should not be drawn. stop = uicontrol('style','toggle','string','stop', ... 'background','white'); creates a toggle user interface control, labeled 'stop' and colored white, in the default position near the lower left corner of the figure. The handle for the control is saved in the variable stop. drawnow causes the initial figure, including the initial point, to actually be plotted on the computer screen. The statement p = [ .85 .92 .99 1.00]; sets up a vector of probabilities. The statements A1 = [ .85 .04; -.04 .85]; b1 = [0; 1.6]; A2 = [ .20 -.26; .23 .22]; b2 = [0; 1.6]; A3 = [-.15 .28; .26 .24]; b3 = [0; .44]; A4 = [ 0 0 ; 0 .16]; define the four affine transformations. The statement cnt = 1; initializes a counter that keeps track of the number of points plotted. The statement tic initializes a stopwatch timer. The statement while ~get(stop,'value') begins a while loop that runs as long as the 'value' property of the stop toggle is equal to 0. Clicking the stop toggle changes the value from 0 to 1 and terminates the loop. 18 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB r = rand; generates a pseudorandom value between 0 and 1. The compound if statement if r < p(1) x = A1*x + b1; elseif r < p(2) x = A2*x + b2; elseif r < p(3) x = A3*x + b3; else x = A4*x; end picks one of the four affine transformations. Because p(1) is 0.85, the first trans- formation is chosen 85% of the time. The other three transformations are chosen relatively infrequently. set(h,'xdata',x(1),'ydata',x(2)); changes the coordinates of the point h to the new (x1 , x2 ) and plots this new point. But get(h,'erasemode') is 'none', so the old point also remains on the screen. cnt = cnt + 1; counts one more point. drawnow tells Matlab to take the time to redraw the figure, showing the new point along with all the old ones. Without this command, nothing would be plotted until stop is toggled. end matches the while at the beginning of the loop. Finally, t = toc; reads the timer. s = sprintf('%8.0f points in %6.3f seconds',cnt,t); text(-1.5,-0.5,s,'fontweight','bold'); displays the elapsed time since tic was called and the final count of the number of points plotted. Finally, set(stop,'style','pushbutton','string','close', ... 'callback','close(gcf)') changes the control to a push button that closes the window. 1.4. Magic Squares 19 1.4 Magic Squares Matlab stands for Matrix Laboratory. Over the years, Matlab has evolved into a general-purpose technical computing environment, but operations involving vectors, matrices, and linear algebra continue to be its most distinguishing feature. Magic squares provide an interesting set of sample matrices. The command help magic tells us the following: MAGIC(N) is an N-by-N matrix constructed from the integers 1 through N^2 with equal row, column, and diagonal sums. Produces valid magic squares for all N > 0 except N = 2. Magic squares were known in China over 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. The 3-by-3 magic square is known as Lo Shu. Legend has it that Lo Shu was discovered on the shell of a turtle that crawled out of the Lo River in the 23rd century b.c. Lo Shu provides a mathematical basis for feng shui, the ancient Chinese philosophy of balance and harmony. Matlab can generate Lo Shu with A = magic(3) which produces A = 8 1 6 3 5 7 4 9 2 The command sum(A) sums the elements in each column to produce 15 15 15 The command sum(A')' transposes the matrix, sums the columns of the transpose, and then transposes the results to produce the row sums 15 15 15 The command sum(diag(A)) sums the main diagonal of A, which runs from upper left to lower right, to produce 15 20 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The opposite diagonal, which runs from upper right to lower left, is less important in linear algebra, so finding its sum is a little trickier. One way to do it makes use of the function that "flips" a matrix "upside-down." sum(diag(flipud(A))) produces 15 This verifies that A has equal row, column, and diagonal sums. Why is the magic sum equal to 15? The command sum(1:9) tells us that the sum of the integers from 1 to 9 is 45. If these integers are allocated to 3 columns with equal sums, that sum must be sum(1:9)/3 which is 15. There are eight possible ways to place a transparency on an overhead projec- tor. Similarly, there are eight magic squares of order three that are rotations and reflections of A. The statements for k = 0:3 rot90(A,k) rot90(A',k) end display all eight of them. 8 1 6 8 3 4 3 5 7 1 5 9 4 9 2 6 7 2 6 7 2 4 9 2 1 5 9 3 5 7 8 3 4 8 1 6 2 9 4 2 7 6 7 5 3 9 5 1 6 1 8 4 3 8 4 3 8 6 1 8 9 5 1 7 5 3 2 7 6 2 9 4 These are all the magic squares of order three. Now for some linear algebra. The determinant of our magic square, 1.4. Magic Squares 21 det(A) is -360 The inverse, X = inv(A) is X = 0.1472 -0.1444 0.0639 -0.0611 0.0222 0.1056 -0.0194 0.1889 -0.1028 The inverse looks better if it is displayed with a rational format. format rat X shows that the elements of X are fractions with det(A) in the denominator. X = 53/360 -13/90 23/360 -11/180 1/45 19/180 -7/360 17/90 -37/360 The statement format short restores the output format to its default. Three other important quantities in computational linear algebra are matrix norms, eigenvalues, and singular values. The statements r = norm(A) e = eig(A) s = svd(A) produce r = 15 e = 15.0000 4.8990 -4.8990 s = 15.0000 6.9282 3.4641 22 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The magic sum occurs in all three because the vector of all ones is an eigenvector and is also a left and right singular vector. So far, all the computations in this section have been done using floating-point arithmetic. This is the arithmetic used for almost all scientific and engineering computation, especially for large matrices. But for a 3-by-3 matrix, it is easy to repeat the computations using symbolic arithmetic and the Symbolic Toolbox. The statement A = sym(A) changes the internal representation of A to a symbolic form that is displayed as A = [ 8, 1, 6] [ 3, 5, 7] [ 4, 9, 2] Now commands like sum(A), sum(A')', det(A), inv(A), eig(A), svd(A) produce symbolic results. In particular, the eigenvalue problem for this matrix can be solved exactly, and e = [ 15] [ 2*6^(1/2)] [ -2*6^(1/2)] A 4-by-4 magic square is one of several mathematical objects on display in u Melancolia, a Renaissance etching by Albrecht D¨rer. An electronic copy of the etching is available in a Matlab data file. load durer whos produces X 648x509 2638656 double array caption 2x28 112 char array map 128x3 3072 double array The elements of the matrix X are indices into the gray-scale color map named map. The image is displayed with image(X) colormap(map) axis image Click the magnifying glass with a "+" in the toolbar and use the mouse to zoom in on the magic square in the upper right-hand corner. The scanning resolution becomes evident as you zoom in. The commands 1.4. Magic Squares 23 load detail image(X) colormap(map) axis image display a higher resolution scan of the area around the magic square. The command A = magic(4) produces a 4-by-4 magic square. A = 16 2 3 13 5 11 10 8 9 7 6 12 4 14 15 1 The commands sum(A), sum(A'), sum(diag(A)), sum(diag(flipud(A))) yield enough 34's to verify that A is indeed a magic square. u The 4-by-4 magic square generated by Matlab is not the same as D¨rer's magic square. We need to interchange the second and third columns. A = A(:,[1 3 2 4]) changes A to A = 16 3 2 13 5 10 11 8 9 6 7 12 4 15 14 1 Interchanging columns does not change the column sums or the row sums. It usually changes the diagonal sums, but in this case both diagonal sums are still 34. So now u u our magic square matches the one in D¨rer's etching. D¨rer probably chose this particular 4-by-4 square because the date he did the work, 1514, occurs in the middle of the bottom row. We have seen two different 4-by-4 magic squares. It turns out that there are 880 different magic squares of order 4 and 275305224 different magic squares of order 5. Determining the number of different magic squares of order 6 or larger is an unsolved mathematical problem. The determinant of our 4-by-4 magic square, det(A), is 0. If we try to compute its inverse inv(A) we get 24 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB Warning: Matrix is close to singular or badly scaled. Results may be inaccurate. So some magic squares represent singular matrices. Which ones? The rank of a square matrix is the number of linearly independent rows or columns. An n-by-n matrix is singular if and only if its rank is less than n. The statements for n = 1:24, r(n) = rank(magic(n)); end [(1:24)' r'] produce a table of order versus rank. 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 3 5 5 6 5 7 7 8 3 9 9 10 7 11 11 12 3 13 13 14 9 15 15 16 3 17 17 18 11 19 19 20 3 21 21 22 13 23 23 24 3 Look carefully at this table. Ignore n = 2 because magic(2) is not really a magic square. What patterns do you see? A bar graph makes the patterns easier to see. bar(r) title('Rank of magic squares') produces Figure 1.4. The rank considerations show that there are three different kinds of magic squares: 1.4. Magic Squares 25 Rank of magic squares 25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 Figure 1.4. Rank of magic squares. • Odd order: n is odd. • Singly even order: n is a multiple of 2, but not 4. • Doubly even order: n is a multiple of 4. Odd-ordered magic squares, n = 3, 5, 7, . . . , have full rank n. They are nonsingular and have inverses. Doubly even magic squares, n = 4, 8, 12, . . . , have rank three no matter how large n is. They might be called very singular. Singly even magic squares, n = 6, 10, 14, . . . , have rank n/2 + 2. They are also singular, but have fewer row and column dependencies than the doubly even squares. If you have Matlab Version 6 or later, you can look at the M-file that gener- ates magic squares with edit magic.m or type magic.m You will see the three different cases in the code. The different kinds of magic squares also produce different three-dimensional surface plots. Try the following for various values of n. surf(magic(n)) axis off set(gcf,'doublebuffer','on') cameratoolbar Double buffering prevents flicker when you use the various camera tools to move the viewpoint. 26 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The following code produces Figure 1.5. for n = 8:11 subplot(2,2,n-7) surf(magic(n)) title(num2str(n)) axis off view(30,45) axis tight end 8 9 10 11 Figure 1.5. Surface plots of magic squares. 1.5 Cryptography This section uses a cryptography example to show how Matlab deals with text and character strings. The cryptographic technique, which is known as a Hill cipher, involves arithmetic in a finite field. Almost all modern computers use the ASCII character set to store basic text. ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. The char- acter set uses 7 of the 8 bits in a byte to encode 128 characters. The first 32 characters are nonprinting control characters, such as tab, backspace, and end-of- line. The 128th character is another nonprinting character that corresponds to the Delete key on your keyboard. In between these control characters are 95 printable 1.5. Cryptography 27 characters, including a space, 10 digits, 26 lowercase letters, 26 uppercase letters, and 32 punctuation marks. Matlab can easily display all the printable characters in the order determined by their ASCII encoding. Start with x = reshape(32:127,32,3)' This produces a 3-by-32 matrix. x = 32 33 34 ... 61 62 63 64 65 66 ... 93 94 95 96 97 98 ... 125 126 127 The char function converts numbers to characters. The statement c = char(x) produces c = !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>? @ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_ 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~ We have cheated a little bit because the last element of x is 127, which corresponds to the nonprinting delete character, and we have not shown the last character in c. You can try this on your computer and see what is actually displayed. The first character in c is blank, indicating that char(32) is the same as ' ' The last printable character in c is the tilde, indicating that char(126) is the same as '~' The characters representing digits are in the first line of c. In fact, d = char(48:57) displays a 10-character string d = 0123456789 28 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB This string can be converted to the corresponding numerical values with double or real. The statement double(d) - '0' produces 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Comparing the second and third lines of c, we see that the ASCII encoding of the lowercase letters is obtained by adding 32 to the ASCII encoding of the uppercase letters. Understanding this encoding allows us to use vector and matrix operations in Matlab to manipulate text. The ASCII standard is often extended to make use of all eight bits in a byte, but the characters that are displayed depend on the computer and operating system you are using, the font you have chosen, and even the country you live in. Try char(reshape(160:255,32,3)') and see what happens on your machine. Our encryption technique involves modular arithmetic. All the quantities in- volved are integers and the result of any arithmetic operation is reduced by tak- ing the remainder or modulus with respect to a prime number p. The functions rem(x,y) and mod(x,y) both compute the remainder if x is divided by y. They produce the same result if x and y have the same sign; the result also has that sign. But if x and y have opposite signs, then rem(x,y) has the same sign as x, while mod(x,y) has the same sign as y. Here is a table: x = [37 -37 37 -37]'; y = [10 10 -10 -10]'; r = [ x y rem(x,y) mod(x,y)] produces 37 10 7 7 -37 10 -7 3 37 -10 7 -3 -37 -10 -7 -7 We have chosen to encrypt text that uses the entire ASCII character set, not just the letters. There are 95 such characters. The next larger prime number is p = 97, so we represent the p characters by the integers 0:p-1 and do arithmetic mod p. The characters are encoded two at a time. Each pair of characters is repre- sented by a 2-vector, x. For example, suppose the text contains the pair of letters 'TV'. The ASCII values for this pair of letters are 84 and 86. Subtracting 32 to make the representation start at 0 produces the column vector 52 x= . 54 1.5. Cryptography 29 The encryption is done with a 2-by-2 matrix-vector multiplication over the integers mod p. The symbol ≡ is used to indicate that two integers have the same remainder, modulo the specified prime: y ≡ Ax, mod p, where A is the matrix 71 2 A= . 2 26 For our example, the product Ax is 3800 Ax = . 1508 If this is reduced mod p, the result is 17 y= . 53 Converting this back to characters by adding 32 produces '1U'. Now comes the interesting part. Over the integers modulo p, the matrix A is its own inverse. If y ≡ Ax, mod p, then x ≡ Ay, mod p. In other words, in arithmetic mod p, A2 is the identity matrix. You can check this with Matlab. p = 97; A = [71 2; 2 26] I = mod(A^2,p) produces A = 71 2 2 26 I = 1 0 0 1 This means that the encryption process is its own inverse. The same function can be used to both encrypt and decrypt a message. The M-file crypto.m begins with a preamble. 30 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB function y = crypto(x) % CRYPTO Cryptography example. % y = crypto(x) converts an ASCII text string into another % coded string. The function is its own inverse, so % crypto(crypto(x)) gives x back. % See also: ENCRYPT. A comment precedes the statement that assigns the prime p. % Use a two-character Hill cipher with arithmetic % modulo 97, a prime. p = 97; Choose two characters above ASCII 128 to expand the size of the character set from 95 to 97. c1 = char(169); c2 = char(174); x(x==c1) = 127; x(x==c2) = 128; The conversion from characters to numerical values is done by x = mod(real(x-32),p); Prepare for the matrix-vector product by forming a matrix with two rows and lots of columns. n = 2*floor(length(x)/2); X = reshape(x(1:n),2,n/2); All this preparation has been so that we can do the actual finite field arithmetic quickly and easily. % Encode with matrix multiplication modulo p. A = [71 2; 2 26]; Y = mod(A*X,p); Reshape into a single row. y = reshape(Y,1,n); If length(x) is odd, encode the last character if length(x) > n y(n+1) = mod((p-1)*x(n+1),p); end Finally, convert the numbers back to characters. y = char(y+32); y(y==127) = c1; y(y==128) = c2; 1.6. The 3n+1 Sequence 31 Let's follow the computation of y = crypto('Hello world'). We begin with a character string. x = 'Hello world' This is converted to an integer vector. x = 40 69 76 76 79 0 87 79 82 76 68 length(x) is odd, so the reshaping temporarily ignores the last element X = 40 76 79 87 82 69 76 0 79 76 A conventional matrix-vector multiplication A*X produces an intermediate matrix. 2978 5548 5609 6335 5974 1874 2128 158 2228 2140 Then the mod(.,p) operation produces Y = 68 19 80 30 57 31 91 61 94 6 This is rearranged to a row vector. y = 68 31 19 91 80 61 30 94 57 6 Now the last element of x is encoded by itself and attached to the end of y. y = 68 31 19 91 80 61 30 94 57 6 29 Finally, y is converted back to a character string to produce the encrypted result. y = 'd?3{p]>~Y&=' If we now compute crypto(y), we get back our original 'Hello world'. 1.6 The 3n+1 Sequence This section describes a famous unsolved problem in number theory. Start with any positive integer n. Repeat the following steps: • If n = 1, stop. • If n is even, replace it with n/2. • If n is odd, replace it with 3n + 1. 32 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB For example, starting with n = 7 produces 7, 22, 11, 34, 17, 52, 26, 13, 40, 20, 10, 5, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1. The sequence terminates after 17 steps. Note that whenever n reaches a power of 2, the sequence terminates in log2 n more steps. The unanswered question is, does the process always terminate? Or is there some starting value that causes the process to go on forever, either because the numbers get larger and larger, or because some periodic cycle is generated? This problem is known as the 3n + 1 problem. It has been studied by many eminent mathematicians, including Collatz, Ulam, and Kakatani, and is discussed in a survey paper by Jeffrey Lagarias [5]. The following Matlab code fragment generates the sequence starting with any specified n. y = n; while n > 1 if rem(n,2)==0 n = n/2; else n = 3*n+1; end y = [y n]; end We don't know ahead of time how long the resulting vector y is going to be. But the statement y = [y n]; automatically increases length(y) each time it is executed. In principle, the unsolved mathematical problem is, Can this code fragment run forever? In actual fact, floating-point roundoff error causes the calculation to misbehave whenever 3n + 1 becomes greater than 253 , but it is still interesting to investigate modest values of n. Let's embed our code fragment in a GUI. The complete function is in the M-file threenplus1.m. For example, the statement threenplus1(7) produces Figure 1.6. The M-file begins with a preamble containing the function header and the help information. function threenplus1(n) % ''Three n plus 1''. % Study the 3n+1 sequence. % threenplus1(n) plots the sequence starting with n. % threenplus1 with no arguments starts with n = 1. % uicontrols decrement or increment the starting n. % Is it possible for this to run forever? 1.6. The 3n+1 Sequence 33 n=7 52 32 16 8 4 2 1 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 Figure 1.6. threenplus1. The next section of code brings the current graphics window forward and resets it. Two push buttons, which are the default uicontrols, are positioned near the bot- tom center of the figure at pixel coordinates [260,5] and [300,5]. Their size is 25 by 22 pixels and they are labeled with '<' and '>'. If either button is subsequently pushed, the 'callback' string is executed, calling the function recursively with a corresponding '-1' or '+1' string argument. The 'tag' property of the current figure, gcf, is set to a characteristic string that prevents this section of code from being reexecuted on subsequent calls. if ~isequal(get(gcf,'tag'),'3n+1') shg clf reset uicontrol( ... 'position',[260 5 25 22], ... 'string','<', ... 'callback','threenplus1(''-1'')'); uicontrol( ... 'position',[300 5 25 22], ... 'string','>', ... 'callback','threenplus1(''+1'')'); set(gcf,'tag','3n+1'); end The next section of code sets n. If nargin, the number of input arguments, is 0, then n is set to 1. If the input argument is either of the strings from the push button callbacks, then n is retrieved from the 'userdata' field of the figure and decremented or incremented. If the input argument is not a string, then it is the desired n. In all situations, n is saved in 'userdata' for use on subsequent calls. 34 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB if nargin == 0 n = 1; elseif isequal(n,'-1') n = get(gcf,'userdata') - 1; elseif isequal(n,'+1') n = get(gcf,'userdata') + 1; end if n < 1, n = 1; end set(gcf,'userdata',n) We've seen the next section of code before; it does the actual computation. y = n; while n > 1 if rem(n,2)==0 n = n/2; else n = 3*n+1; end y = [y n]; end The final section of code plots the generated sequence with dots connected by straight lines, using a logarithmic vertical scale and customized tick labels. semilogy(y,'.-') axis tight ymax = max(y); ytick = [2.^(0:ceil(log2(ymax))-1) ymax]; if length(ytick) > 8, ytick(end-1) = []; end set(gca,'ytick',ytick) title(['n = ' num2str(y(1))]); 1.7 Floating-Point Arithmetic Some people believe that • numerical analysis is the study of floating-point arithmetic; • floating-point arithmetic is unpredictable and hard to understand. We intend to convince you that both of these assertions are false. Very little of this book is actually about floating-point arithmetic. But when the subject does arise, we hope you will find floating-point arithmetic is not only computationally powerful, but also mathematically elegant. If you look carefully at the definitions of fundamental arithmetic operations like addition and multiplication, you soon encounter the mathematical abstraction known as real numbers. But actual computation with real numbers is not very 1.7. Floating-Point Arithmetic 35 practical because it involves limits and infinities. Instead, Matlab and most other technical computing environments use floating-point arithmetic, which involves a finite set of numbers with finite precision. This leads to the phenomena of roundoff, underflow, and overflow. Most of the time, it is possible to use Matlab effectively without worrying about these details, but, every once in a while, it pays to know something about the properties and limitations of floating-point numbers. Twenty years ago, the situation was far more complicated than it is today. Each computer had its own floating-point number system. Some were binary; some were decimal. There was even a Russian computer that used trinary arithmetic. Among the binary computers, some used 2 as the base; others used 8 or 16. And everybody had a different precision. In 1985, the IEEE Standards Board and the American National Standards Institute adopted the ANSI/IEEE Standard 754-1985 for Binary Floating-Point Arithmetic. This was the culmination of almost a decade of work by a 92-person working group of mathematicians, computer scientists, and engineers from universities, computer manufacturers, and microprocessor compa- nies. All computers designed since 1985 use IEEE floating-point arithmetic. This doesn't mean that they all get exactly the same results, because there is some flexibility within the standard. But it does mean that we now have a machine- independent model of how floating-point arithmetic behaves. Matlab has traditionally used the IEEE double-precision format. There is a single-precision format that saves space, but that isn't much faster on modern machines. Matlab 7 will have support for single-precision arithmetic, but we will deal exclusively with double precision in this book. There is also an extended- precision format, which is optional and therefore is one of the reasons for lack of uniformity among different machines. Most nonzero floating-point numbers are normalized. This means they can be expressed as x = ±(1 + f ) · 2e . The quantity f is the fraction or mantissa and e is the exponent. The fraction satisfies 0≤f <1 and must be representable in binary using at most 52 bits. In other words, 252 f is an integer in the interval 0 ≤ 252 f < 252 . The exponent e is an integer in the interval −1022 ≤ e ≤ 1023. The finiteness of f is a limitation on precision. The finiteness of e is a limitation on range. Any numbers that don't meet these limitations must be approximated by ones that do. Double-precision floating-point numbers are stored in a 64-bit word, with 52 bits for f , 11 bits for e, and 1 bit for the sign of the number. The sign of e is accommodated by storing e + 1023, which is between 1 and 211 − 2. The 2 extreme 36 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB values for the exponent field, 0 and 211 −1, are reserved for exceptional floating-point numbers that we will describe later. The entire fractional part of a floating-point number is not f , but 1 + f , which has 53 bits. However, the leading 1 doesn't need to be stored. In effect, the IEEE format packs 65 bits of information into a 64-bit word. The program floatgui shows the distribution of the positive numbers in a model floating-point system with variable parameters. The parameter t specifies the number of bits used to store f . In other words, 2t f is an integer. The parameters emin and emax specify the range of the exponent, so emin ≤ e ≤ emax . Initially, floatgui sets t = 3, emin = −4, and emax = 3 and produces the distribution shown in Figure 1.7. |||||||||||||||||| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 1/16 1/2 1 2 4 8−1/2 Figure 1.7. floatgui. Within each binary interval 2e ≤ x ≤ 2e+1 , the numbers are equally spaced with an increment of 2e−t . If e = 0 and t = 3, for example, the spacing of the numbers between 1 and 2 is 1/8. As e increases, the spacing increases. It is also instructive to display the floating-point numbers with a logarithmic scale. Figure 1.8 shows floatgui with logscale checked and t = 5, emin = −4, and emax = 3. With this logarithmic scale, it is more apparent that the distribution in each binary interval is the same. A very important quantity associated with floating-point arithmetic is high- lighted in red by floatgui. Matlab calls this quantity eps, which is short for machine epsilon. eps is the distance from 1 to the next larger floating-point number. For the floatgui model floating-point system, eps = 2^(-t). |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 1/16 1/8 1/4 1/2 1 2 4 8 16−1/4 Figure 1.8. floatgui(logscale). Before the IEEE standard, different machines had different values of eps. Now, for IEEE double-precision, eps = 2^(-52). 1.7. Floating-Point Arithmetic 37 The approximate decimal value of eps is 2.2204 · 10−16 . Either eps/2 or eps can be called the roundoff level. The maximum relative error incurred when the result of an arithmetic operation is rounded to the nearest floating-point number is eps/2. The maximum relative spacing between numbers is eps. In either case, you can say that the roundoff level is about 16 decimal digits. A frequent instance of roundoff occurs with the simple Matlab statement t = 0.1 The mathematical value t stored in t is not exactly 0.1 because expressing the decimal fraction 1/10 in binary requires an infinite series. In fact, 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 = 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 + 9 + 10 + 11 + 12 + · · · . 10 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 After the first term, the sequence of coefficients 1, 0, 0, 1 is repeated infinitely often. Grouping the resulting terms together four at a time expresses 1/10 in a base 16, or hexadecimal, series. 1 9 9 9 9 = 2−4 · 1 + + 2 + 3 + 4 + ··· 10 16 16 16 16 Floating-point numbers on either side of 1/10 are obtained by terminating the fractional part of this series after 52 binary terms, or 13 hexadecimal terms, and rounding the last term up or down. Thus t1 < 1/10 < t2 , where 9 9 9 9 9 t1 = 2−4 · 1 + + 2 + 3 + · · · + 12 + 13 , 16 16 16 16 16 9 9 9 9 10 t2 = 2−4 · 1 + + + 3 + · · · + 12 + 13 . 16 162 16 16 16 It turns out that 1/10 is closer to t2 than to t1 , so t is equal to t2 . In other words, t = (1 + f ) · 2e , where 9 9 9 9 10 f= + + 3 + · · · + 12 + 13 , 16 162 16 16 16 e = −4. The Matlab command format hex causes t to be displayed as 3fb999999999999a 38 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The characters a through f represent the hexadecimal "digits" 10 through 15. The first three characters, 3fb, give the hexadecimal representation of decimal 1019, which is the value of the biased exponent e+1023 if e is −4. The other 13 characters are the hexadecimal representation of the fraction f . In summary, the value stored in t is very close to, but not exactly equal to, 0.1. The distinction is occasionally important. For example, the quantity 0.3/0.1 is not exactly equal to 3 because the actual numerator is a little less than 0.3 and the actual denominator is a little greater than 0.1. Ten steps of length t are not precisely the same as one step of length 1. Matlab is careful to arrange that the last element of the vector 0:0.1:1 is exactly equal to 1, but if you form this vector yourself by repeated additions of 0.1, you will miss hitting the final 1 exactly. What does the floating-point approximation to the golden ratio look like? format hex phi = (1 + sqrt(5))/2 produces phi = 3ff9e3779b97f4a8 The first hex digit, 3, is 0011 in binary. The first bit is the sign of the floating- point number; 0 is positive, 1 is negative. So phi is positive. The remaining bits of the first three hex digits contain e + 1023. In this example, 3ff in base 16 is 3 · 162 + 15 · 16 + 15 = 1023 in decimal. So e = 0. In fact, any floating-point number between 1.0 and 2.0 has e = 0, so its hex output begins with 3ff. The other 13 hex digits contain f . In this example, 9 14 3 10 8 f= + 2 + 3 + · · · + 12 + 13 . 16 16 16 16 16 With these values of f and e, (1 + f )2e ≈ φ. Another example is provided by the following code segment. format long a = 4/3 b = a - 1 c = 3*b e = 1 - c 1.7. Floating-Point Arithmetic 39 With exact computation, e would be 0. But with floating-point, the output pro- duced is a = 1.33333333333333 b = 0.33333333333333 c = 1.00000000000000 e = 2.220446049250313e-016 It turns out that the only roundoff occurs in the division in the first statement. The quotient cannot be exactly 4/3, except on that Russian trinary computer. Consequently the value stored in a is close to, but not exactly equal to, 4/3. The subtraction b = a - 1 produces a b whose last bit is 0. This means that the multiplication 3*b can be done without any roundoff. The value stored in c is not exactly equal to 1, and so the value stored in e is not 0. Before the IEEE standard, this code was used as a quick way to estimate the roundoff level on various computers. The roundoff level eps is sometimes called "floating-point zero," but that's a misnomer. There are many floating-point numbers much smaller than eps. The smallest positive normalized floating-point number has f = 0 and e = −1022. The largest floating-point number has f a little less than 1 and e = 1023. Matlab calls these numbers realmin and realmax. Together with eps, they characterize the standard system. Binary Decimal eps 2^(-52) 2.2204e-16 realmin 2^(-1022) 2.2251e-308 realmax (2-eps)*2^1023 1.7977e+308 If any computation tries to produce a value larger than realmax, it is said to overflow. The result is an exceptional floating-point value called infinity or Inf. It is represented by taking e = 1024 and f = 0 and satisfies relations like 1/Inf = 0 and Inf+Inf = Inf. If any computation tries to produce a value that is undefined even in the real number system, the result is an exceptional value known as Not-a-Number, or NaN. Examples include 0/0 and Inf-Inf. NaN is represented by taking e = 1024 and f nonzero. If any computation tries to produce a value smaller than realmin, it is said to underflow. This involves one of the optional, and controversial, aspects of the IEEE standard. Many, but not all, machines allow exceptional denormal or subnormal floating-point numbers in the interval between realmin and eps*realmin. The smallest positive subnormal number is about 0.494e-323. Any results smaller than this are set to 0. On machines without subnormals, any results less than realmin are set to 0. The subnormal numbers fill in the gap you can see in the floatgui model system between 0 and the smallest positive number. They do provide an 40 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB elegant way to handle underflow, but their practical importance for Matlab-style computation is very rare. Denormal numbers are represented by taking e = −1023, so the biased exponent e + 1023 is 0. Matlab uses the floating-point system to handle integers. Mathematically, the numbers 3 and 3.0 are the same, but many programming languages would use different representations for the two. Matlab does not distinguish between them. We sometimes use the term flint to describe a floating-point number whose value is an integer. Floating-point operations on flints do not introduce any roundoff error, as long as the results are not too large. Addition, subtraction, and multiplication of flints produce the exact flint result if it is not larger than 253 . Division and square root involving flints also produce a flint if the result is an integer. For example, sqrt(363/3) produces 11, with no roundoff. Two Matlab functions that take apart and put together floating-point num- bers are log2 and pow2. help log2 help pow2 produces [F,E] = LOG2(X) for a real array X, returns an array F of real numbers, usually in the range 0.5 <= abs(F) < 1, and an array E of integers, so that X = F .* 2.^E. Any zeros in X produce F = 0 and E = 0. X = POW2(F,E) for a real array F and an integer array E computes X = F .* (2 .^ E). The result is computed quickly by simply adding E to the floating-point exponent of F. The quantities F and E used by log2 and pow2 predate the IEEE floating-point standard and so are slightly different from the f and e we are using in this section. In fact, f = 2*F-1 and e = E-1. [F,E] = log2(phi) produces F = 0.80901699437495 E = 1 Then phi = pow2(F,E) gives back phi = 1.61803398874989 1.7. Floating-Point Arithmetic 41 As an example of how roundoff error affects matrix computations, consider the 2-by-2 set of linear equations 17x1 + 5x2 = 22, 1.7x1 + 0.5x2 = 2.2. The obvious solution is x1 = 1, x2 = 1. But the Matlab statements A = [17 5; 1.7 0.5] b = [22; 2.2] x = A\b produce x = -1.0588 8.0000 Where did this come from? Well, the equations are singular, but consistent. The second equation is just 0.1 times the first. The computed x is one of infinitely many possible solutions. But the floating-point representation of the matrix A is not exactly singular because A(2,1) is not exactly 17/10. The solution process subtracts a multiple of the first equation from the second. The multiplier is mu = 1.7/17, which turns out to be the floating-point number obtained by truncating, rather than rounding, the binary expansion of 1/10. The matrix A and the right-hand side b are modified by A(2,:) = A(2,:) - mu*A(1,:) b(2) = b(2) - mu*b(1) With exact computation, both A(2,2) and b(2) would become zero, but with floating-point arithmetic, they both become nonzero multiples of eps. A(2,2) = (1/4)*eps = 5.5511e-17 b(2) = 2*eps = 4.4408e-16 Matlab notices the tiny value of the new A(2,2) and displays a message warning that the matrix is close to singular. It then computes the solution of the modified second equation by dividing one roundoff error by another. x(2) = b(2)/A(2,2) = 8 This value is substituted back into the first equation to give x(1) = (22 - 5*x(2))/17 = -1.0588 42 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB The details of the roundoff error lead Matlab to pick out one particular solution from among the infinitely many possible solutions to the singular system. Our final example plots a seventh-degree polynomial. x = 0.988:.0001:1.012; y = x.^7-7*x.^6+21*x.^5-35*x.^4+35*x.^3-21*x.^2+7*x-1; plot(x,y) The resulting plot in Figure 1.9 doesn't look anything like a polynomial. It isn't smooth. You are seeing roundoff error in action. The y-axis scale factor is tiny, 10−14 . The tiny values of y are being computed by taking sums and differences of −14 x 10 5 4 3 2 1 0 −1 −2 −3 −4 −5 0.985 0.99 0.995 1 1.005 1.01 1.015 Figure 1.9. Is this a polynomial? numbers as large as 35 · 1.0124 . There is severe subtractive cancellation. The example was contrived by using the Symbolic Toolbox to expand (x − 1)7 and carefully choosing the range for the x-axis to be near x = 1. If the values of y are computed instead by y = (x-1).^7; then a smooth (but very flat) plot results. 1.8 Further Reading Additional information about floating-point arithmetic and roundoff error can be found in Higham [4] and Overton [6]. Exercises 43 Exercises 1.1. Which of these familiar rectangles is closest to a golden rectangle? Use Mat- lab to do the calculations with an element-by-element vector division, w./h. • 3-by-5 inch index card, • 8.5-by-11 inch U.S. letter paper, • 8.5-by-14 inch U.S. legal paper, • 9-by-12 foot rug, • 9:16 "letterbox" TV picture, • 768-by-1024 pixel computer monitor. 1.2. ISO standard A4 paper is commonly used throughout most of the world, except in the United States and Canada. Its dimensions are 210 by 297 mm. This is not a golden rectangle, but the aspect ratio is close to another familiar irrational mathematical quantity. What is that quantity? If you fold a piece of A4 paper in half, what is the aspect ratio of each of the halves? Modify the M-file goldrect.m to illustrate this property. 1.3. How many terms in the truncated continued fraction does it take to approx- imate φ with an error less than 10−10 ? As the number of terms increases beyond this roundoff, error eventually intervenes. What is the best accuracy you can hope to achieve with double-precision floating-point arithmetic and how many terms does it take? 1.4. Use the Matlab backslash operator to solve the 2-by-2 system of simultane- ous linear equations c1 + c2 = 1, c1 φ + c2 (1 − φ) = 1 for c1 and c2 . You can find out about the backslash operator by taking a peek at the next chapter of this book, or with the commands help \ help slash 1.5. The statement semilogy(fibonacci(18),'-o') makes a logarithmic plot of Fibonacci numbers versus their index. The graph is close to a straight line. What is the slope of this line? 1.6. How does the execution time of fibnum(n) depend on the execution time for fibnum(n-1) and fibnum(n-2)? Use this relationship to obtain an ap- proximate formula for the execution time of fibnum(n) as a function of n. Estimate how long it would take your computer to compute fibnum(50). Warning: You probably do not want to actually run fibnum(50). 44 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB 1.7. What is the index of the largest Fibonacci number that can be represented exactly as a Matlab double-precision quantity without roundoff error? What is the index of the largest Fibonacci number that can be represented approx- imately as a Matlab double-precision quantity without overflowing? 1.8. Enter the statements A = [1 1; 1 0] X = [1 0; 0 1] Then enter the statement X = A*X Now repeatedly press the up arrow key, followed by the Enter key. What happens? Do you recognize the matrix elements being generated? How many times would you have to repeat this iteration before X overflows? 1.9. Change the fern color scheme to use pink on a black background. Don't forget the stop button. 1.10. (a) What happens if you resize the figure window while the fern is being generated? Why? (b) The M-file finitefern.m can be used to produce printed output of the fern. Explain why printing is possible with finitefern.m but not with fern.m. 1.11. Flip the fern by interchanging its x- and y-coordinates. 1.12. What happens to the fern if you change the only nonzero element in the matrix A4? 1.13. What are the coordinates of the lower end of the fern's stem? 1.14. The coordinates of the point at the upper tip end of the fern can be computed by solving a certain 2-by-2 system of simultaneous linear equations. What is that system and what are the coordinates of the tip? 1.15. The fern algorithm involves repeated random choices from four different for- mulas for advancing the point. If the kth formula is used repeatedly by itself, without random choices, it defines a deterministic trajectory in the (x, y) plane. Modify finitefern.m so that plots of each of these four trajectories are superimposed on the plot of the fern. Start each trajectory at the point (−1, 5). Plot o's connected with straight lines for the steps along each trajec- tory. Take as many steps as are needed to show each trajectory's limit point. You can superimpose several plots with plot(...) hold on plot(...) plot(...) hold off 1.16. Use the following code to make your own Portable Network Graphics file from the fern. Then compare your image with one obtained from ncm/fern.png. Exercises 45 bg = [0 0 85]; % Dark blue background fg = [255 255 255]; % White dots sz = get(0,'screensize'); rand('state',0) X = finitefern(500000,sz(4),sz(3)); d = fg - bg; R = uint8(bg(1) + d(1)*X); G = uint8(bg(2) + d(2)*X); B = uint8(bg(3) + d(3)*X); F = cat(3,R,G,B); imwrite(F,'myfern.png','png','bitdepth',8) 1.17. Modify fern.m or finitefern.m so that it produces Sierpinski's triangle. Start at 0 x= . 0 At each iterative step, the current point x is replaced with Ax + b, where the matrix A is always 1/2 0 A= 0 1/2 and the vector b is chosen at random with equal probability from among the three vectors 0 1/2 √1/4 b= , b= , and b = . 0 0 3/4 1.18. greetings(phi) generates a seasonal holiday fractal that depends upon the parameter phi. The default value of phi is the golden ratio. What hap- pens for other values of phi? Try both simple fractions and floating-point approximations to irrational values. 1.19. A = magic(4) is singular. Its columns are linearly dependent. What do , null(A) null(A,'r'), null(sym(A)), and rref(A) tell you about that de- pendence? 1.20. Let A = magic(n) for n = 3, 4, or 5. What does p = randperm(n); q = randperm(n); A = A(p,q); do to sum(A) sum(A')' sum(diag(A)) sum(diag(flipud(A))) rank(A) 1.21. The character char(7) is a control character. What does it do? 1.22. What does char([169 174]) display on your computer? 46 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB 1.23. What fundamental physical law is hidden in this string? s = '/b_t3{$H~MO6JTQI>v~#3GieW*l(p,nF' 1.24. Find the two files encrypt.m and gettysburg.txt. Use encrypt to encrypt gettysburg.txt. Then decrypt the result. Use encrypt to encrypt itself. 1.25. With the NCM directory on your path, you can read the text of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with fp = fopen('gettysburg.txt'); G = char(fread(fp))' fclose(fp); (a) How many characters are in the text? (b) Use the unique function to find the unique characters in the text. (c) How many blanks are in the text? What punctuation characters, and how many of each, are there? (d) Remove the blanks and the punctuation and convert the text to all upper- or lowercase. Use the histc function to count the number of letters. What is the most frequent letter? What letters are missing? (e) Use the bar function as described in help histc to plot a histogram of the letter frequencies. (f) Use get(gca,'xtick') and get(gca,'xticklabel') to see how the x- axis of the histogram is labeled. Then use set(gca,'xtick',...,'xticklabel',...) to relabel the x-axis with the letters in the text. 1.26. If x is the character string consisting of just two blanks, x = ' ' then crypto(x) is actually equal to x. Why does this happen? Are there any other two-character strings that crypto does not change? 1.27. Find another 2-by-2 integer matrix A for which mod(A*A,97) is the identity matrix. Replace the matrix in crypto.m with your matrix and verify that the function still works correctly. 1.28. The function crypto works with 97 characters instead of 95. It can produce output, and correctly handle input, that contains two characters with ASCII values greater than 127. What are these characters? Why are they necessary? What happens to other characters with ASCII values greater than 127? 1.29. Create a new crypto function that works with just 29 characters: the 26 lowercase letters, plus blank, period, and comma. You will need to find a 2-by-2 integer matrix A for which mod(A*A,29) is the identity matrix. 1.30. The graph of the 3n + 1 sequence has a particular characteristic shape if the starting n is 5, 10, 20, 40, . . . , that is, n is five times a power of 2. What is this shape and why does it happen? Exercises 47 1.31. The graphs of the 3n + 1 sequences starting at n = 108, 109, and 110 are very similar to each other. Why? 1.32. Let L(n) be the number of terms in the 3n + 1 sequence that starts with n. Write a Matlab function that computes L(n) without using any vectors or unpredictable amounts of storage. Plot L(n) for 1 ≤ n ≤ 1000. What is the maximum value of L(n) for n in this range, and for what value of n does it occur? Use threenplus1 to plot the sequence that starts with this particular value of n. 1.33. Modify floatgui.m by changing its last line from a comment to an executable statement and changing the question mark to a simple expression that counts the number of floating-point numbers in the model system. 1.34. Explain the output produced by t = 0.1 n = 1:10 e = n/10 - n*t 1.35. What does each of these programs do? How many lines of output does each program produce? What are the last two values of x printed? x = 1; while 1+x > 1, x = x/2, pause(.02), end x = 1; while x+x > x, x = 2*x, pause(.02), end x = 1; while x+x > x, x = x/2, pause(.02), end 1.36. Which familiar real numbers are approximated by floating-point numbers that display the following values with format hex? 4059000000000000 3f847ae147ae147b 3fe921fb54442d18 1.37. Let F be the set of all IEEE double-precision floating-point numbers, except NaNs and Infs, which have biased exponent 7ff (hex), and denormals, which have biased exponent 000 (hex). (a) How many elements are there in F? (b) What fraction of the elements of F are in the interval 1 ≤ x < 2? (c) What fraction of the elements of F are in the interval 1/64 ≤ x < 1/32? (d) Determine by random sampling approximately what fraction of the ele- ments x of F satisfy the Matlab logical relation x*(1/x) == 1 1.38. The classic quadratic formula says that the two roots of the quadratic equa- tion ax2 + bx + c = 0 are √ −b ± b2 − 4ac x1 , x2 = . 2a 48 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB Use this formula in Matlab to compute both roots for a = 1, b = −100000000, c = 1. Compare your computed results with roots([a b c]) What happens if you try to compute the roots by hand or with a hand calculator? You should find that the classic formula is good for computing one root, but not the other. So use it to compute one root accurately and then use the fact that c x1 x2 = a to compute the other. 1.39. The power series for sin x is x3 x5 x7 sin x = x − + − + ···. 3! 5! 7! This Matlab function uses the series to compute sin x. function s = powersin(x) % POWERSIN. Power series for sin(x). % POWERSIN(x) tries to compute sin(x) % from a power series s = 0; t = x; n = 1; while s+t ~= s; s = s + t; t = -x.^2/((n+1)*(n+2)).*t; n = n + 2; end What causes the while loop to terminate? Answer the following questions for x = π/2, 11π/2, 21π/2, and 31π/2: How accurate is the computed result? How many terms are required? What is the largest term in the series? What do you conclude about the use of floating-point arithmetic and power series to evaluate functions? 1.40. Steganography is the technique of hiding messages or other images in the low-order bits of the data for an image. The Matlab image function has a hidden image that contains other hidden images. To see the top-level image, just execute the single command Exercises 49 image Then, to improve its appearance, colormap(gray(32)) truesize axis ij axis image axis off But that's just the beginning. The NCM program stegano helps you continue the investigation. (a) How many images are hidden in the cdata for the default image? (b) What does this have to do with the structure of floating-point numbers? 1.41. Prime spirals. A Ulam prime spiral is a plot of the location of the prime numbers using a numbering scheme that spirals outward from the center of a grid. Our NCM file primespiral(n,c) generates an n-by-n prime spiral starting with the number c in the center. The default is c = 1. Figure 1.10 is primespiral(7) and Figure 1.11 is primespiral(250). 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 42 21 22 23 24 25 26 41 20 7 8 9 10 27 40 19 6 1 2 11 28 39 18 5 4 3 12 29 38 17 16 15 14 13 30 37 36 35 34 33 32 31 Figure 1.10. primespiral(7). The concentration of primes on some diagonal segments is remarkable, and not completely understood. The value of the element at position (i, j) is a piecewise quadratic function of i and j, so each diagonal segment represents a mini-theorem about the distribution of primes. The phenomenon was dis- covered by Stanislaw Ulam in 1963 and appeared on the cover of Scientific American in 1964. There are a number of interesting Web pages devoted to prime spirals. Start with [7] and [9]. (a) The Matlab demos directory contains an M-file spiral.m. The integers from 1 to n2 are arranged in a spiral pattern, starting in the center of the matrix. The code in demos/spiral.m is not very elegant. Here is a better version. 50 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 nz = 6275 Figure 1.11. primespiral(250). function S = spiral(n) %SPIRAL SPIRAL(n) is an n-by-n matrix with elements % 1:n^2 arranged in a rectangular spiral pattern. S = []; for m = 1:n S = rot90(S,2); S(m,m) = 0; p = ??? v = (m-1:-1:0); S(:,m) = p-v'; S(m,:) = p+v; end if mod(n,2)==1 S = rot90(S,2); end What value should be assigned to p each time through the loop so that this function generates the same matrices as spiral.m in the demos directory? (b) Why do half of the diagonals of spiral(n) contain no primes? (c) Let S = spiral(2*n) and let r1 and r2 be rows that go nearly halfway across the middle of the matrix: Exercises 51 r1 = S(n+1,1:n-2) r2 = S(n-1,n+2:end) Why do these rows contain no primes? (d) There is something particularly remarkable about primespiral(17,17) primespiral(41,41) What is it? (e) Find values of n and c, both less than 50, and not equal to 17 or 41, so that [S,P] = primespiral(n,c) contains a diagonal segment with 8 or more primes. 1.42. Triangular numbers are integers of the form n(n + 1)/2. The term comes from the fact that a triangular grid with n points on a side has a total of n(n + 1)/2 points. Write a function trinums(m) that generates all the triangular numbers less than or equal to m. Modify primespiral to use your trinums and become trinumspiral. 1.43. Here is a puzzle that does not have much to do with this chapter, but you might find it interesting nevertheless. What familiar property of the integers is represented by the following plot? 8 6 4 2 0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 1.44. In the Gregorian calendar, a year y is a leap year if and only if (mod(y,4) == 0) & (mod(y,100) ~= 0) | (mod(y,400) == 0) Thus 2000 was a leap year, but 2100 will not be a leap year. This rule implies that the Gregorian calendar repeats itself every 400 years. In that 400-year period, there are 97 leap years, 4800 months, 20871 weeks, and 146097 days. The Matlab functions datenum, datevec, datestr, and weekday use these facts to facilitate computations involving calendar dates. For example, either of the statements [d,w] = weekday('Aug. 17, 2003') and [d,w] = weekday(datenum([2003 8 17])) tells me that my birthday was on a Sunday in 2003. Use Matlab to answer the following questions. (a) On which day of the week were you born? 52 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB (b) In a 400-year Gregorian calendar cycle, which weekday is the most likely for your birthday? (c) What is the probability that the 13th of any month falls on a Friday? The answer is close to, but not exactly equal to, 1/7. 1.45. Biorhythms were very popular in the 1960s. You can still find many Web sites today that offer to prepare personalized biorhythms, or that sell software to compute them. Biorhythms are based on the notion that three sinusoidal cycles influence our lives. The physical cycle has a period of 23 days, the emotional cycle has a period of 28 days, and the intellectual cycle has a period of 33 days. For any individual, the cycles are initialized at birth. Figure 1.12 is my biorhythm, which begins on August 17, 1939, plotted for an eight-week period centered around the date this is being written, October 19, 2003. It shows that my intellectual power reached a peak yesterday, that my physical strength and emotional wellbeing will reach their peaks within 6 h of each other on the same day next week, and that all three cycles will be at their low point within a few days of each other early in November. birthday: 08/17/39 100 50 0 Physical −50 Emotional Intellectual −100 09/21 09/28 10/05 10/12 10/19 10/26 11/02 11/09 11/16 10/19/03 Figure 1.12. My biorhythm. The date and graphics functions in Matlab make the computation and dis- play of biorhythms particularly convenient. Dates are represented by their date number, which is the number of days since the zeroth day of a theoretical calendar year zero. The function datenum returns the date number for any given date and time. For example, datenum('Oct. 19, 2003') is 731873. The expression fix(now) returns the date number of the current date. The following code segment is part of a program that plots a biorhythm for an eight-week period centered on the current date. t0 = datenum(mybirthday); t1 = fix(now); t = (t1-28):1:(t1+28); y = 100*[sin(2*pi*(t-t0)/23) sin(2*pi*(t-t0)/28) sin(2*pi*(t-t0)/33)]; plot(t,y) Exercises 53 (a) Complete this program, using your own birthday, and the line, datetick, title, datestr, and legend functions. Your program should produce some- thing like Figure 1.12. (b) All three cycles started at zero when you were born. How long does it take until all three simultaneously return to that initial condition? How old were you, or will you be, on that date? Plot your biorhythm near that date. You should find the lcm function helpful. (c) Is it possible for all three cycles to reach their maximum or minimum at exactly the same time? 54 Chapter 1. Introduction to MATLAB Bibliography [1] M. Barnsley, Fractals Everywhere, Academic Press, Boston, 1993. [2] D. C. Hanselman and B. Littlefield, Mastering MATLAB 6, A Compre- hensive Tutorial and Reference, Prentice–Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2000. [3] D. J. Higham and N. J. Higham, MATLAB Guide, SIAM, Philadelphia, 2000. [4] N. J. Higham, Accuracy and Stability of Numerical Algorithms, SIAM, Philadelphia, 2002. [5] J. Lagarias, The 3x + 1 problem and its generalizations, American Mathemat- ical Monthly, 92 (1985), pp. 3–23. http://www.cecm.sfu.ca/organics/papers/lagarias [6] M. Overton, Numerical Computing with IEEE Floating Point Arithmetic, SIAM, Philadelphia, 2001. [7] I. Peterson, Prime Spirals, Science News Online, 161 (2002). http://www.sciencenews.org/20020504/mathtrek.asp [8] K. Sigmon and T. A. Davis, MATLAB Primer, Sixth Edition, Chapman and Hall/CRC, Boca Raton, FL, 2002. [9] E. Weisstein, World of Mathematics, Prime Spiral, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeSpiral.html [10] The MathWorks, Inc., Getting Started with MATLAB. http://www.mathworks.com/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc /learn_matlab/learn_matlab.shtml [11] The MathWorks, Inc., List of Matlab-based books. http://www.mathworks.com/support/books/index.jsp 55
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Your letters: west county
Let oil industry work
I have watched with utter amazement as our Democratic-dominated Congress wreaks havoc on our nation almost daily. Well, not really daily, as they've cut their workweek down to three days. Maybe we should be glad about that.
Recently, while watching a House committee grill some oil industry executives, I heard a Southland Democratic congresswoman threatening to "socialize" the entire industry. Total madness. They obviously weren't there to listen to what the industry representatives had to say, but only to prance and preen before the TV cameras, mistakenly thinking this would make them look good. Another Democratic congresswoman made a statement to the effect that, though she had no evidence, she suspected the oil companies were in collusion to keep fuel prices high, and that the company executives present had to prove to her that they weren't. This is juvenile thinking, at best.
Both Senate and House committees turned a deaf ear to the industry's pleas to allow access to oil deposits abundant on federal lands and offshore, and to remove sweeping environmental prohibitions that prevent construction of new refineries. Remember when a then-Republican Congress proposed getting some oil out of a tiny parcel in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? If a Democratic president hadn't vetoed the idea, we'd have about 5 percent added to our domestic production today.
We need more responsible adults in Congress, and less childish petulance. And we mustn't lose the services of the dwindling number of real adults we have in Congress. Our incumbent congressman, Elton Gallegly, is one of this increasingly rare species. His voting record reflects a determination to keep our country strong, healthy and sane.
— Don Yokum, Ventura
Protecting minority beliefs
Re: Dorothy Campagna's June 4 letter, "Shame on justices":
Campagna wrote, "How dare they (the California Supreme Court justices) overrule what the majority of California voters want?" Evidently, the writer wasn't paying attention in civics class because she seems unaware that one of the roles of the courts is to protect minorities from the oppression of the majority. One need only remember "Brown v. Board of Education" and many other cases in which the court ruled that following the dictates of the majority was illegally impinging on the rights of the minority. One of the reasons this country came into being in the first place is because those who came here did so to escape the oppression of minority beliefs by the majority.
What I remember from civics class is that under our Constitution, every citizen of this country has the right to hold any beliefs they wish without interference from the government, not just those who hold majority beliefs. Apparently, we need to be reminded of this every time an unpopular belief is granted the same protection as the more popular ones.
Keep in mind also that if everyone in the country held the same beliefs, this would be a very boring place to live. As pointed out so well in the cartoon "Candorville," this court ruling does not require anyone to marry a member of the same sex. It just allows you to do that if you choose to do so.
— Todd Terres, Camarillo
It is a matter of human rights
Re: Richard Larsen's May 27 essay, "A matter of law and rights":
I agree this goes directly to human rights. His essay missed an important issue that occurred here in California in 1963-1967. In '63, the state passed the "Rumsford Fair Housing Act" making it illegal to discriminate in the sale or rental of real estate based upon race or creed.
The majority of citizens, being neither brown nor black, disagreed and quickly whipped out pens, petitions and pushed Proposition 14 through to amend the state constitution. So, once again, minority people were denied the right to live where they may have wanted to.
However, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the amendment as it was a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
I don't understand how two consenting adults who want to marry can be denied. And, why others are so vehemently against that. This is still the "home of the brave, land of the free," isn't it? It seems inevitable to me that this negative attempt will also fail. Maybe someone out there can enlighten me.
— J.R. "Pat" Patterson, Oxnard
Taxation without representation
Re: your May 8 article, "911 fee will be charged starting in July":
I received no legal notice that I would he charged a tax on every phone line.
Nothing came to me in the mail, personally, at my house, and I do not consider an item in the paper a mandate to comply with an illegal tax on my establishment.
I called Ventura's city treasurer on this matter, and she shuttled me off to a police person in charge of the question. I then called The Star to register my complaint regarding 911 calls. The person I spoke to agreed that it would be taxation without representation.
Thank you for adding my name to those having opted out of this fiasco.
— Elaine L. West, Ventura
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Consider the complexity behind everything, behind every living thing—animal or vegetable. As advanced as technology has become, it is still far from being able to emulate the wonders of nature's architecture. Science has made great strides in recent years deciphering the enigma of DNA, but what secrets still remain hidden?
Each and every one of the vast processes necessary to every living cell was imprinted, at some moment in history, into a unique, marvelous, and exquisitely complex molecule. Whether this was due—as some suggest—to eons of trial and error or through careful design, divine in origin, modern geneticists still remain astonished at this mechanism. There is an ongoing investigation to probe the enigma hidden within the universe of our biology: Deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA.
Molecules of DNA contain an overwhelming amount of information. If we were to dedicate ourselves to transcribing all the information necessary for life contained within these molecules, we could easily fill a small library with an encyclopedia of a thousand tomes.
Unwind each thread of DNA in our body, lay them out in a chain, and the last molecule would find itself in a very cold place—at a distance 500,000 times farther than from the earth to the moon! And all this, achieved through a few organic compounds or "nucleotides" arranged alternately in the molecule, can produce a complete and unique body with just a four-letter alphabet.
A Genuine Human Alphabet
In the mid-1970s, scientists developed the sequence for the chemical letters in DNA. In 1990, the National Institute of Health, the Department of Energy, and others set about to sequence the more than 3 billion letters found in the human genome to determine the complete set of DNA in the human body. This undertaking, called the Human Genome Project, was completed in 2003. These findings continue to bring numerous surprises to scientists around the world.
Many contemporary investigators studying the genomic language believe that the sophistication of this complex code provides tangential proof for the existence of God. While others, working from the same data, insist that the language reveals an indisputable argument that all living beings proceed from a common ancestor.
In recent years, many molecular biologists have tried to settle this debate, collaborating with cryptologists, statisticians, and linguists among other professions, striving to find the hidden message in this grand molecule. As a result, not only has our understanding and knowledge of the code been enriched, but in 2006 a second code was discovered superimposed on the first.
Molecular biologists have discovered that the DNA code and human language are not only comparable; they follow an identical pattern. Computer programs specialized to obtain information through a process of dividing the genome sequence into millions of parts, distinguish the mini-sequences as "words" of a big encyclopedia. Through subjecting these "words" to Zipf's Law, known in linguistics as the governing principle behind the totality of human languages (from Chinese to English), scientists were dumbfounded to discover that the genetic code followed the same law.
Zipf's Law states that in any text, be it a book or an article, the most repeated word will appear many more times than the second most repeated, which itself will be repeated many more times than the third most repeated, and so on successively. The genetic code appears to follow the same law, which for many is the greatest indication of a higher intelligence. And just imagine: If a second code has been found in this already complex system at the infancy of mankind's genetic cartography, could there be other languages still hidden inside the genetic map?
'Junk' DNA
While mankind has managed to chart the human genome, very little of this vast molecule is completely understood. Scientists have discovered that the number of active genes in our species, and in the many others as equally complex, is simply absurd. Nearly 96 percent of our whole genome is at first glance useless—not engaging in activities of any perceivable importance to the cell.
Because it appears identical in all organisms, some scientists believe that this significant genetic portion acts as a kind of historic library—linking us with all the other species on the planet, including fungus, bacteria, and the extinct dinosaurs. As the "junk" does not appear to play a vital role in our cellular functions, this camp of researchers asserts that an overwhelming portion of our DNA serves merely to demonstrate an evolution that took place over millions of years.
But such genetic similarity (verified in all species) could actually be a deceptive illusion on the path to interpreting the true origin of DNA. In fact, scientists have already discovered that the language stored in this not-yet-understood segment could in fact play an important role in the life of the organism, connecting it to a history and origin not yet known.
Official members of the Human Genome Project declared in January 2007 that DNA junk could not have originated on this Earth through explainable chemical processes. Likewise, molecular biologist Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of the DNA molecule in 1953, noted that while there were no evolutionary "indicators" more simple than the DNA chain, the molecule simply seemed to have materialized out of nothing overnight.
The Molecule of Life: an Unfathomable Technology
Placed beside the marvel of DNA, the fruits obtained through human technology are considerably less stunning. From our hunter-gatherer ancestors to today, humanity has developed the capacity to build ever taller skyscrapers, design supersonic aircraft, send satellites into space, and construct supercomputers. But despite our phenomenal accomplishments, science has yet to create anything that remotely compares with the complexity of a cell.
The basic unit of all organisms is infinitely more intricate than any supercomputer, yet the idea that a DNA molecule could spontaneously evolve from simple primordial components in the remote past is one that many scientists doggedly insist upon. This theory faces astounding statistical odds given that the molecular combinations which could have given rise to the simplest bacteria in prehistoric conditions are one in a billion—a figure that far surpasses what statisticians consider a practical impossibility.
Is the molecular architecture achieved in a DNA molecule—containing all the information necessary for a being to grow, reproduce, eat, metabolize, and interact with others—due to the evolutionary processes, the divine creation of a superior intelligence, or even, as some suggest, the result of a genetic manipulation by advanced extra-terrestrials? While mankind has managed to draw a map of this tiny universe, the meanings and purposes behind its various components still remain an elusive mystery.


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LOGAN — Flooding that occurred in the Mud Fork Creek watershed in March prompted a Logan couple to file suit against Fountain Place companies.
Listed as defendants are Fountain Place Shopping Center, LLC, Fountain Place, LLC, and Fountain Place Holdings, LLC doing business as Ellis Branch Quarry. The civil action filed by Kermit and Tamra Johnson cites negligence and unreasonableness in conducting surface mining, mining reclamation and post-mining construction.
The couple's property was damaged as a result of flooding on March 23. The suit alleges the companies' activities were below the standard of care and were the proximate cause of and/or materially contributed to the flooding.
Suit papers say W.Va. mining regulations intended to reduce surface water runoff and/or minimize downstream sediment deposition were violated. It further states analyses and plans to control runoff were not made before, during or after conducting their activities and plans were not developed or implemented to control the runoff or sediment disposition when harm could come to property of neighboring landowners. The claim concludes by stating the risk of further flooding and damage still exists.
The Johnson's are asking for a jury trial for issues so triable, compensation for damages to the property, punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interest, and any and all other relief available under the law and in equity.