In 1988, while I was with Ardent Computer in Silicon Valley, I gave a talk that previewed MATLAB graphics. The title was "Pictures of Matrices". At the time, a mathematician friend of mine asked.

  Why would anyone want pictures of matrices?

My response is the graphics demonstrations that we have done over the years. Here is a baker's dozen of my favorite examples.

Contents

Vibes

The vibrating L-shaped membrane.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2023/12/13/blog-post-number-300-vibrating-logo/.

Pitch, Roll and Yaw

Studying rotations.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2023/02/10/grafix-users-guide/

Rubiks Cube

The world's greatest mathematical puzzle.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2022/04/04/digital-simulation-of-rubiks-cube/

Eigenwalker

Principle component analysis of the human gait.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2016/04/11/the-eigenwalker-model-of-the-human-gait/

Simulation

Simulink at the test track.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2023/09/11/exploring-matrices/

Sponge

The Menger sponge is a popular fractal that generalizes Cantor sets and Sierpinski triangles.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2021/12/06/the-menger-sponge-fractal/

Drums

Contour plots of isospectral pairs.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2012/08/06/can-one-hear-the-shape-of-a-drum-part-1-eigenvalues/

Jahnke and Emde

Contour plot of the Hankel function, based on a hand drawing in a 1933 book by German mathematicians Eugene Jahnke and Fritz Emde.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2014/12/15/jahnke-and-emde-revisited/

Penny

High resolution measurements of the depth of the mold for the United States one cent coin.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2014/03/17/higher-resolution-penny/

Jordan Form

Jordan Canonical Form of the 64-by-64 Redheffer matrix from the MATLAB Gallery.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2025/06/12/a-million-dollar-matrix/

Expshow

An interactive graphical experiment lets you discover the value of one of the most important numerical quantities in mathematics.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2015/07/27/discover-e-with-a-graphical-experiment/

Eigshow

One of my all-time favorite MATLAB examples is eigshow.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2013/07/08/eigshow-week-1

Eden

This sketch of the MathWorks Logo was made by Eden Rajapakse when she was ten years old. Her blog post has received more "likes" than any other post.

https://blogs.mathworks.com/cleve/2021/12/23/a-new-view-of-our-logo/

Get the MATLAB code

Published with MATLAB® R2024b