Book excerpt: This is a simple, concise, and useful book, explaining MATLAB for freshmen in engineering. MATLAB is presently a globally available standard computational tool for engineers and scientists. The terminology, syntax, and the use of the programming language are well defined and the organization of the material makes it easy to locate information and navigate through the textbook.This new text emphasizes that students do not need to write loops to solve many problems. The Matlab "find" command with its relational and logical operators can be usedinstead of loops in many cases. This was mentioned in Palm's previous MATLAB texts, but receives more emphasis in this MATLAB 6 edition, starting with Chapter 1, and re-emphasized in Chapter 4.