MATLAB Educational Services Reviews & Insights

Score8.9 out of 10

223 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for MATLAB are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

MATLAB has proven to be an invaluable tool for a wide range of use cases across academia, research, and industry. Users have praised its versatility, ease of use, and extensive capabilities in solving complex problems and handling large amounts of data. From academic homework and research projects to major industry applications, MATLAB has been employed for a variety of purposes.

In the academic realm, MATLAB is commonly used as a teaching instrument, particularly in engineering and mathematical courses. It helps students grasp complex concepts that cannot be easily computed by hand and provides an accessible coding platform with excellent visualization capabilities. MATLAB is also utilized for simulation purposes, allowing engineering students to evaluate complex integrals and summations, as well as undertake signal processing projects.

Researchers frequently rely on MATLAB for data analysis and modeling tasks. Its intuitive interface and programming structures make it an ideal tool for generating graphs and plots for visualization purposes. MATLAB's built-in artificial neural network models have been effectively employed for various studies, including rainfall-runoff modeling, earthquake and wind excitation analysis, and climate data processing.

In industry settings, MATLAB proves its worth by solving complex problems, automating processes, and handling large datasets. It is widely used for prototyping mathematical algorithms in machine learning applications, aiding in product conceptualization through data visualization and mathematical modeling. Additionally, MATLAB finds utility in diverse fields such as power systems simulation, medical research, control systems development, image processing, algorithm prototyping, and automation.

Overall, MATLAB's broad range of applications across academia, research, and industry makes it a valuable asset for individuals and organizations alike. Its adaptable nature enables users to tackle various challenges efficiently while benefiting from its abundant functionalities and user-friendly interface.

MATLAB Reviews

16 Reviews

Educational ServicesHigher Education13Education Management3

MATLAB- Fantastic program for visualizing data and complex modelling.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

June 2, 2022

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have been using MATLAB for quite a long time and we use it quite frequently at Broward. It is constantly used within our research groups and by quite a lot of undergrad and postgraduate students. For the most part, we use the software for simulation purposes and we also interface MATLAB when teaching other program languages such as Fortran, as the engine allows for this. The interface is incredibly intuitive and the modeling of differential equations/integrals allows us to quickly and efficiently process large amounts of data in a short time. Currently, we are running a machine learning course, which teaches the students how to visualize and build neural networks, so building prototypes of these models helps develop an underlying understanding of the mathematics involved.

Pros

MATLAB is great at providing in-depth models and simulations with very little coding, this is particularly useful to non-coders and potential data scientists who know very little or basic understanding of coding languages. The drag and drop components of the software are ideal and its simplicity allows the user to really understand the math behind the simulations running.
It is fantastic for visualizing data, without being able to properly visualize data is almost useless, MATLAB allows the users to quickly dissect and understand how different data sets affect different variables and so forth.
It has a wide range of supportive documentation and the online community is very active and engaged. If you ever have any problems, you can always count on someone being there to help you understand what is going on.

Cons

I believe the software is quite expensive, so it is not open to independent parties which is a shame as it is fantastic at what it does, if they could find a way to include independent people rather than mass groups, I think it would really benefit a lot of people.
The responsiveness of the software is not always the best and this can be very hindering to the user, especially when working with sensitive data/models.
MATLAB is inefficient in some of its works and sometimes it is not the best tool for the job, there are times when it is quicker to write scripts in Python that run and work much better than they would ever do in MATLAB.

Likelihood to Recommend

There are many specific scenarios where MATLAB is well suited. Researchers need fast modeling and fast prototypes for data. In a research environment, new ideas are always popping up so it is important to be able to distinguish quickly what methods are needed and how to get things done. Mostly we know in advance what methods will be successful in our modeling so the only caveat we have is programming time- this is not too much of a problem, because a lot of time is saved as everything needed to run a successful simulation is already outlined in MATLAB variety of functions. I think situations, where MATLAB is less suited, are for people which already can code really well- or already know languages that outperform MATLAB in certain scenarios, such as Python. As a general program language, it often un-performs and although does integrate into other languages such as Fortran, it is quirky and quite slow for many a task.

Doyle Reynolds

Adjunct Mathematics Instructor in Research & Development at Broward College (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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MATLAB really does it all, but shines best with computations when no other program can!

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 15, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MATLAB is used across the whole department and simplifies the handling of mass amounts of information and computations. Previously we would attempt to use Excel, which is okay but makes it much harder to visualize your equations. MATLAB also has a lot more well documents commands/functions that make computations and matrix operations tremendously easier than other comparable software. As an engineer I also think it is actually simpler to use than say Python.

Pros

Creating iterative solvers to arrive to an ideal answer or solution for something like a design or optimization problem
Performing mathematical operations on functions that also have functions nested within them
Plotting both 2d and 3d graphs with well labeled data

Cons

As with many coding software pieces, it sometimes can be tricky troubleshooting errors in your code.
Wish testing particular samples of the code was easier

Likelihood to Recommend

MATLAB really does best for solving computational problems in math and engineering. Especially when you have to use a lot of functions in your solving process, or if you have a nonlinear equation that must be iteratively solved. [MATLAB] can also perform things like integration and derivation on your equations that you put into it.

Verified User

Engineer in Engineering (Higher Education company, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

MATLAB - great tool for Mathematicians and Engineers

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

April 9, 2021

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use MATLAB in many of my courses. Currently, I am using it in an advanced math modeling course (to solve systems of differential equations) and in an advanced mathematical software course. The interface is fairly intuitive and the programming structures are easy to understand, making this software an ideal way to teach mathematical programming to students. MATLAB is a package that many of the students will find in their workplaces when they get out in industry.

Pros

Matrix operations
Numerical methods
Plotting

Cons

A bit of a learning curve, especially for those just learning to program
Error messages could be more informative

Likelihood to Recommend

Engineering, mathematical modeling, and machine learning are all fields where MATLAB will shine. It's fast, reliable, and relatively easy to use. MATLAB is the de facto standard when it comes to producing high-quality plots. If you need to deal with large data sets, and not take forever processing them, MATLAB may very well be the tool for you!

Tom Reid

Asst. Prof. of Mathematics at University of South Carolina Aiken (Higher Education, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

MATLAB.. computing with learning.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

August 9, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MATLAB is used by our organization for handling various major projects. It has been used throughout the organization. It addresses the major problems of development and handling various projects in object detection and the medical field. It also has got major importance in the field of research and development. It is very helpful for students as well as researchers.

Pros

Latest version include support of deep and machine learning.
Various tool box for processing and work in various fields.
Medical image enhancement is one of major use in MATLAB.

Cons

Need improvement in learning module.
The support for previous version is not available for new version users.
The signal processing tool box need major changes.

Likelihood to Recommend

The MATLAB is suited in various fields. It is best suited for the field of research and development. The major problems occur where we need to enhance and detect anything in an image, maybe medical images. MATLAB is also used in simulating various wireless networks with the latest technology.

Jatin Gupta

Assistant Professor in Engineering at Chitkara University (Education Management, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

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Read my review of MATLAB on @TrustRadius

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

April 5, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have been using MATLAB for almost all of my academic stuff. I use it for solving my homework and completing my research. I have used it to do data processing and filtering. I have used the inbuilt artificial neural network models for my work. I used ANN for rainfall-runoff modeling for my research. I have also used it to do earthquake and wind excitation related studies. I have used MATLAB to generate time histories for wind loads and earthquake loads. For all the experiments that I carry out in my research, I use MATLAB for data filtering to remove noise from the obtained experimental results. I have used MATLAB for simple finite element modeling as well.

Pros

It has a very user friendly library which helps users learn this software fairly quickly in a short span of time.
The graphical user interface provided by the software is really good.
The code that a person writes allows options for debugging.
One can visualize the flow of control of their code inside MATLAB.

Cons

I would want for the library to get updated more regularly.
MATLAB uses a lot of computer memory for running heavy simulations. Its performance could certainly be optimized.
Apart from this, I think MATLAB is a very powerful software and helps in almost every scenario of engineering.

Likelihood to Recommend

MATLAB is well suited for data processing and filtering. It can be used well with civil engineering problems related to earthquake or wind engineering. It has a lot of inbuilt models within it. I have used it for Artificial Neural Networks. I have run heavy simulations with MATLAB and the results that I obtained were similar to what I got when I did heavy finite element simulations.

Saransh Dikshit

Graduate Research Assistant in Engineering at Iowa State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

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Why I Prefer MatLab over Python

Rating: 6 out of 10

Incentivized

February 13, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use MatLab as our go-to engineering to programming platform. Our whole research procedure is vertically integrated using MatLab - we use MatLab's data acquisition toolbox to collect experimental data; its statistical tool-boxes to perform statistical analysis on the collected data and use its general programming interface to post-process the data and to make multi-physics simulation models to study the observed phenomenon.

Pros

Has robust and easy-to-use debugging tools that can help one identify problems in one's codes.
Rich, well-developed and efficient library of mathematical and statistical functions that one might need to develop models or perform statistical analysis.
A very active online user community that is a great resource in terms of seeking help when you hit a snag.
Great help literature (and sometimes videos too) on all tools making it possible for all to train themselves.

Cons

MatLab is pricier than most of its competitors and because of this reason, many organizations are moving towards cheaper alternatives - mostly Python.
MatLab is inefficient when it comes to performing a large number of iterations. It gets laggy and often crashes. Python is better in this regard.
There is a limited number of hardware options (mostly NI) that can be connected directly to the data acquisition toolbox.

Likelihood to Recommend

My rating would have been an "8" if MatLab was more affordable, but because of its steep price point, and especially after its recent increase in licensing price, I don't feel comfortable recommending my colleagues a tool that I absolutely love and use everyday, but also believe that it is overpriced. Had the price not been an issue, I would've strongly recommended MatLab to all my peers, especially those working in STEM.

Abdullah Umair Bajwa

Graduate Researcher in Engineering at Texas A&M University (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

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MATLAB: not just a programming environment

Rating: 10 out of 10

Incentivized

February 13, 2019

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MATLAB is used across the entire University. There are network licenses that can be used in the many computer labs across campus, and thus can either be used by instructors within their courses or by students working on a project individually. MATLAB is used primarily to teach concepts of control systems, neural networks and to run computer simulations.

Pros

A great high-level abstraction programming language that's very easy to learn yet extremely powerful for more advanced users to take advantage of its computing capabilities.
Top notch documentation that's built directly into the programming environment and very well structured courses/workshops can be found online (free).
Great support team and frequently updated application that's designed to make efficient use of modern Intel processor's available resources.
Diverse types of licensing (students, professional, organizational) allow for flexible plans and can be customized to include the toolboxes you require for your specific use case.

Cons

MATLAB should have a full free version (without time limit) in order to be more accessible and thus have a greater user community.
The idea of having toolboxes to work directly with hardware (microcontrollers, single-board computers) is great, but one can tell it isn't updated very frequently and there isn't as much documentation available as with more common resources.
Our organization had a lot of trouble getting our network licenses to work properly and there wasn't any local service provider that could help us get it to work faster.

Likelihood to Recommend

MATLAB is an outstanding environment for scientific research and engineering teams to develop scripts and simulations and be able to look into new areas of interest without having specialized knowledge of the topic. You can make use of the many available toolboxes in many different fields such as Statistics, Data Science and Databases. You can even compile code that interacts with other programming languages like C++, third-party embedded systems and industrial hardware (PLCs). MATLAB also has a simulation environment that enables you to create visual representations of real systems to interact with them and adjust them before production saving you time and money.

Juan Carlos Molina Castejón

Research Team for the development of a CubeSAT in Research & Development at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (Education Management, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

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MATLAB - The powerful platform to solve complicated problems

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 21, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I am a graduate research assistant and I always use MATLAB for my research purposes, as does my whole research group. Our university also uses this software, especially graduate students. The main use of MATLAB is to create high-quality publishable figures, solve the more complicated problems through coding, fit my data with the curve fitting toolbox, optimize my process using the optimization toolbox and finally, it just makes my research life easier. I love it very much.

Pros

Generating publication quality figures
Fitting the experimental data with the model using curve fitting toolbox
Process optimization using the optimization toolbox is easier than on other software
It seems to me like a calculator which helps me to solve the complicated coding problems

Cons

MATLAB is somewhat expensive.
The toolboxes are not included with MATLAB as you have to purchase the license for the toolbox, which makes MATLAB very expensive.
If you have large data, it becomes slow which annoys me a lot.

Likelihood to Recommend

Easy coding, Small data handling, curve fitting, and optimization of the system are all well suited in MATLAB, whereas if you have large sets of data they will make the process very slow. In my research, I always use Matlab for generating figures and analyzing the data. Sometimes, if the coding is composed with large data, then it is a problem. Overall, I will recommend using MATLAB as there is no other suitable software as user-friendly as MATLAB.

Md Shahinuzzaman

Graduate Research Assistant at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Higher Education, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

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Fantastic tool to kill engineering problems

Rating: 9 out of 10

Incentivized

December 11, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MATLAB has been used by mostly all of the engineering programs and so it has been made available to all of the engineering computer labs to solve problems in multiple disciplines, such as product optimization design, spectrum and time series analysis of data, signal process, statistical data analysis and model formulation, and image processing.

Pros

A tremendous collection of functions (mathematics, statistic, financial, etc) have already integrated into MATLAB and free to use for all of the users no matter what type of license users have
MATLAB Toolbox is pretty powerful. Its GUI interface helps users visualize solutions directly and can generate editable MATLAB code easily for future use.
MATLAB tutorials are everywhere (online video tutorials, forums, and seminars) and are easy to find. Documentation from MATLAB itself is also clear to follow with few sample questions.

Cons

Although MATLAB language is easy to learn and use, there is still limited interaction between MATLAB and other widely-used programming languages such as Python. Would like to see a language convertor that can convert MATLAB language into other ones.
It takes much RAM and memory of a computer when processing data in MATLAB, which definitely slows the computational speed.
To generate an animation for a parametric study, it would take lots of efforts to write the code or proceed with a specified GUI. With some experience with mathematical, I feel mathematical is even easier to use although I was quite new to it at that time.

Likelihood to Recommend

MATLAB is very suitable for educational use, such as to test new algorithms, to simulate/optimize product design, and to analyze large sets of data. However, installing MATLAB needs a large amount of space in a computer, and using it to process data, which is the most popular feature, also consumes large memory/RAM in a computer. Users would need to configure the computer before installing it on the computer.

Bin Cai

Graduate Research Assistant in Engineering at Iowa State University (Higher Education, 5001-10,000 employees)

Vetted Review

7 years of experience

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MATLAB - my statistical savior!

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

September 27, 2018

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

MATLAB is used by both my lab and the general department. We often utilize this program to perform many of the statistical analyses that are much more difficult to do in excel or by hand. It is also very useful for us to use for creation of codes which we can share with students to use in labs.

Pros

Very easy to write your own operations and share with others
Great statistical processing capabilities
Very user friendly for even inexperienced programmers

Cons

It is often difficult to receive help on issues with writing code
To a new user, it can often be overwhelming to start. A tutorial would be great!
Better compatibility with other programs

Likelihood to Recommend

It is really one of the only programs that is decent in computing statistical processes. While the R program can also be used for many of the same tasks, I have found that MATLAB is generally more proficient at complex or long statistical calculations. Unlike R, MATLAB is often difficult to produce good-looking outputs

Shelby Bowden

Graduate Research Assistant in Research & Development at Western Kentucky University (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

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