FFT for a single frequency I was looking for a more efficient way of finding the magnitude and phase of a signal at a certain frequency without performing an FFT because it produces more information than I need and I came across this comment on the Matlab message board:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_original/250421.

If I am sampling at 1500Hz and my signal is 100 points and I am looking for the phase and magnitude at 15Hz, would this be suitable method for obtaining the information I need? Also, why does the OP suggest windowing the signal as well?
It's certainly calculating the right thing.  Though instead of

sum(x.*(cos(1000*2*pi*t)-i*sin(2*pi*1000*t)))*2/N;


you might try

sum(x.*exp(-i*2*pi*1000*t))*2/N;


If you need to do something similar, but in-line (not in a batch), you might want to look at the Goertzel algorithm. As the Wikipedia link says:


  .. provides a means for efficient evaluation of individual terms of the Discrete Fourier Transform


And there's nothing particularly "Fast" about this way of doing it, so it's really just calculating one DFT bin.