What Is Symbolic Math Toolbox?
Symbolic Math Toolbox™ provides functions for solving, plotting, and manipulating symbolic math equations. Create, run, and share symbolic math code using the toolbox. Get suggestions for next steps in a symbolic workflow using MATLAB® Live Editor. The toolbox provides functions in common mathematical areas such as calculus, linear algebra, algebraic and differential equations, equation simplification, and equation manipulation.
Symbolic Math Toolbox lets you analytically perform differentiation, integration, simplification, transforms, and equation solving. Perform dimensional computations and convert between units. Perform symbolic math computations analytically or use variable-precision arithmetic with the results displayed in mathematical typeset.
Share symbolic work with others who use MATLAB as live scripts or convert them to HTML, Word, LaTeX, or PDF documents. Generate MATLAB functions, Simulink® function blocks, and Simscape™ equations directly from symbolic expressions.
Published: 24 Aug 2021
Symbolic Math Toolbox provides an easy, intuitive, and complete environment to interactively learn and apply algebra, calculus, and differential equations. You can perform common analytical computations, such as differentiation and integration, to get closed form results, simplification and manipulation of expressions for greater insight, and solve algebraic and differential equations.
You can visualize analytical expressions in 2D and 3D and even animate the plots and create videos from it. Symbolic Math in Live Editor lets you interactively update and display symbolic math computations alongside MATLAB code, formatted text, equations, and images, which can be published and shared as executable live scripts or PDFs and HTML documents. While working with analytical expressions, you can get suggestions for next steps by right-clicking on the output or by clicking on the three-dot icon.
These suggestions help you insert and execute function calls or live editor tasks directly into live scripts. In addition to providing exact rational math, Symbolic Math Toolbox provides variable precision, allowing algorithms to run in a higher or lower position than MATLAB's built-in double. Symbolic Math Toolbox also includes units for working with physical quantities and performing dimensional analysis.
Symbolic Math Toolbox can be used in many engineering and scientific applications, such as in optimization where symbolic expressions of exact gradients and Hessians improve accuracy and speed of optimization. In nonlinear control design, symbolic linearization of the state space system description improves speed of recalculation at any operating point during execution. You can integrate symbolic results with broader MATLAB and Simulink applications by converting symbolic expressions into numeric MATLAB functions, Simulink, and Simscape blocks.
And you can also generate optimized C and Fortran code from symbolic expressions for using numerical simulations and deployment. For more information, return to the Symbolic Math Toolbox page or choose a link below.