Re: matlab & simulink

[Pau Fernandez]

>We are trying to convince our company to develop models of complex
>systems. We suggested learning swarm. The "powers that be" have come
>back and said "how about using matlab"?  Does anyone know if matlab can
>do the kinds of things swarm can do?

The first thing is that although MatLab is a powerful tool, its power comes
from the fact that it is capable of multiplying matrices at the highest speed,
so unless you can rethink every simulation in terms of matrices, it will be
VERY slow, and when I say VERY, it means hundreds of times slower than a pure C
program, not far from a Objective-C one. So this is the first drawback.

On the other hand, although MatLab now supports Object-Oriented programming, I
don't think it's worth learning the language unless you are already working in
MatLab and want some OOP benefits. This is another drawback.

And, considering that Matlab hasn't got the facilities swarm has in complex
systems simulations (because Swam is oriented to them), I don't think it's a
good choice.

>Since I don't know how to use matlab I really can't say what its
>capabilities are. Ray's view is even if matlab can be used to do agent
>based modeling, there most likely aren't libraries available. We don't
>know very much about complex systems or how to model them. In the past,
>these pursuits were written off as "too complicated".

MatLab is a very good tool for electrical engineers and civil engineers, so you
are right in thinking that it doesn't provide things like "the fractal dimension
of a 2D matrix" in a library, it certainly doesn't (well, as far as v5 is
concerned). The good think about MatLab is maybe the fact
it has been a success and a lot of people uses it, but I don't think that is a
problem. There's a lot of people using Swarm too, and you always know that
someone's gonna answer your questions in this mailing list anyway.

I hope it helps...

------------------------------------------------------
OOO Pau Fernandez Duran
OOO Complex Systems Research Group
OOO Departament de Física i Enginyeria Nuclear (FEN)
UPC

Mòdul B4,   Campus Nord UPC  Tel.   +34-93-4017056
c/ Sor Eulalia d'Anzizu s/n  email: address@hidden
08034 Barcelona 
SPAIN
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