Working with matrices

The matrix is the fundamental data type in GAUSS. This tutorial will teach you how to operate with and on matrices in GAUSS.

Let's get started by supposing that we have the average exam scores for a group of students included in the table below:

	Exam 1	Exam 2	Exam 3
History	77	82	86
Math	94	87	84
English	88	85	82

and that we would like to compare them.

Our first step is to enter this as a GAUSS matrix. In GAUSS, matrices are defined using curly braces {}. Spaces are used to separate elements in each row and commas are used to separate columns. Create the matrix avg_scores by entering:

avg_scores = { 77 82 86, 94 87 84, 88 85 82 };

The average score for the first math exam is located in the second row of the first column. GAUSS uses square brackets [] to perform matrix indexing. Enter:

print avg_scores[2, 1];

to print the element from the average score for the first mat exam.