Question

Translating word problems into matlab code: suppose traffic is a matlab array with 10 rows (one for each intersection) and 24 columns (one for each hour of the day) (10 x 24) representing the number of cars that transverse the intersection during that hour

Define a MATLAB variable intersectionsbyhour that contains the difference in traffic numbers from intersection to intersection for each hour of the day.

Answer 1

To define the MATLAB variable 'intersectionsbyhour', you would want to calculate the difference in traffic numbers from intersection to intersection for each hour of the day.

Step-by-step explanation:

To define the MATLAB variable 'intersectionsbyhour', you would want to calculate the difference in traffic numbers from intersection to intersection for each hour of the day. This can be done by subtracting the traffic numbers for each intersection and hour from the previous intersection and hour. Here's an example of how you could implement this in MATLAB:

intersectionsbyhour = zeros(10, 24);

for i = 2:10
for j = 1:24
intersectionsbyhour(i, j) = traffic(i, j) - traffic(i - 1, j);
end
end

To create the Matlab variable intersectionsbyhour representing the differences in traffic numbers between intersections for each hour, the line of code to use is 'intersectionsbyhour = diff(traffic, 1, 1);' which utilizes the diff function along the first dimension.

To translate the word problem into Matlab code, we need to create a variable intersectionsbyhour which will hold the difference in traffic numbers between each consecutive intersection for each hour of the day. Assuming the original traffic data is stored in a matrix called traffic, the Matlab code to achieve this can be:

intersectionsbyhour = diff(traffic, 1, 1);

This line of code uses the diff function, which computes differences between adjacent elements of an array. Since our differences are between intersections (rows), we specify the second argument as 1, and to indicate that we want to perform this operation along the first dimension (rows), we set the third argument as 1 as well. As a result, intersectionsbyhour will have 9 rows (one less than traffic because differences are between pairs) and the same 24 columns.