Starting with Matlab/Octave

Matlab (MATrix LABoratory) and Octave are program designed mainly for numerical computations, and producing graphs with the results.

For simplicity, we refer to Matlab when we mean both Matlab and Octave.

Parts that are valid only for Matlab will be colored like this;

Those valid only for Octave like this (at least for now).

It supports matrix operations, offers easy graphing commands, knows how to solve (numerically) algebraic and differential equations, computes Fourier and wavelet transforms, as well as many other things.

You can find a few resources on the web (including a manual by its producers) under Help on the left.

To start Matlab, use its icon.
On Linux, you can start by typing matlab in a shell; if you do not want to have the fancy desktop, issue instead the command matlab -nodesktop.
To quit Matlab type quit at the Matlab prompt.
On Linux, to abort a computation (e.g., because it takes too long), type Control-C.