Converting between types in MATLAB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Converting between types

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are working with a small store's sales data. The sales numbers are stored as strings, but you need to convert them to numbers to do calculations.

🎯 Goal: You will create a list of sales as strings, convert them to numbers, and then calculate the total sales.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a cell array of sales amounts as strings

Create a variable to hold the number of sales

Convert the sales strings to numbers using str2double

Calculate the total sales by summing the numeric values

Print the total sales

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Stores often receive sales data as text from different sources. Converting these texts to numbers is essential for calculations like totals and averages.

💼 Career

Data analysts and programmers frequently convert data types to prepare data for analysis and reporting.

1

Create sales data as strings

Create a cell array called salesStrings with these exact string values: '100', '250', '175', '300', '225'.

MATLAB

% Create a cell array called salesStrings with the given string values
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use curly braces {} to create a cell array of strings in MATLAB.

2

Create a variable for the number of sales

Create a variable called numSales that stores the number of elements in salesStrings using the length function.

MATLAB

salesStrings = {'100', '250', '175', '300', '225'};
% Create a variable numSales that holds the number of sales
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use length(salesStrings) to find how many sales there are.

3

Convert sales strings to numbers

Create a variable called salesNumbers that converts salesStrings to numeric values using the str2double function.

MATLAB

salesStrings = {'100', '250', '175', '300', '225'};
numSales = length(salesStrings);
% Convert salesStrings to numbers and store in salesNumbers
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use str2double to convert each string in the cell array to a number.

4

Calculate and display total sales

Calculate the total sales by summing salesNumbers and store it in a variable called totalSales. Then, print the total sales using disp with the message: 'Total sales: ' followed by the number.

MATLAB

salesStrings = {'100', '250', '175', '300', '225'};
numSales = length(salesStrings);
salesNumbers = str2double(salesStrings);
% Calculate total sales and display the result
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use sum to add numbers and disp with num2str to print the message and number.