Since its introduction in 1984, MATLAB's ever-growing popularity and functionality have secured its position as an industry-standard software package. The user-friendly, interactive environment of MATLAB 6.x, which includes a high-level programming language, versatile graphics capabilities, and abundance of intrinsic functions, helps users focus on their applications rather than on programming errors. MATLAB has now leapt far ahead of FORTRAN as the software of choice for engineering applications.