MATLAB is a
computer program by
MathWorks which allows to easily manipulate
matrices, plot
functions and data, and implement
algorithms in its own internal
programming language. It runs on
Windows,
MacOS and
Unix and is widely used in the teaching of
linear algebra and
numerical analysis. The language was invented by Cleve Moler in the late
1970s.
Free alternatives to MATLAB include GNU Octave and Scilab.