Matrix concatenation in MATLAB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Matrix concatenation

📖 Scenario: You are working with data collected from two different sensors. Each sensor gives you a small matrix of numbers. You want to combine these matrices to analyze all the data together.

🎯 Goal: Build a MATLAB program that creates two matrices, sets a configuration variable for concatenation direction, concatenates the matrices accordingly, and then displays the combined matrix.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create two matrices named matrixA and matrixB with exact values

Create a variable concatDirection to specify concatenation direction

Concatenate matrixA and matrixB horizontally or vertically based on concatDirection

Display the resulting concatenated matrix

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Combining data from multiple sensors or experiments often requires joining matrices horizontally or vertically for analysis.

💼 Career

Matrix concatenation is a fundamental skill in data processing, scientific computing, and engineering tasks.

1

Create two matrices

Create a matrix called matrixA with values [1 2; 3 4] and a matrix called matrixB with values [5 6; 7 8].

MATLAB

% Create matrixA and matrixB with specified values
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to create matrices. Separate columns with spaces and rows with semicolons.

2

Set concatenation direction

Create a variable called concatDirection and set it to the string 'horizontal'.

MATLAB

matrixA = [1 2; 3 4];
matrixB = [5 6; 7 8];
% Set concatDirection to 'horizontal'
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use single quotes to create a string in MATLAB.

3

Concatenate matrices based on direction

Use an if statement to check if concatDirection is 'horizontal'. If yes, concatenate matrixA and matrixB horizontally and store in resultMatrix. Otherwise, concatenate them vertically.

MATLAB

matrixA = [1 2; 3 4];
matrixB = [5 6; 7 8];
concatDirection = 'horizontal';
% Concatenate matrices based on concatDirection
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use strcmp to compare strings in MATLAB. Use square brackets with space for horizontal and semicolon for vertical concatenation.

4

Display the concatenated matrix

Use disp to display the variable resultMatrix.

MATLAB

matrixA = [1 2; 3 4];
matrixB = [5 6; 7 8];
concatDirection = 'horizontal';
if strcmp(concatDirection, 'horizontal')
    resultMatrix = [matrixA matrixB];
else
    resultMatrix = [matrixA; matrixB];
end
% Display the resultMatrix
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use disp(resultMatrix) to show the matrix in the command window.