This is a rough outline of course topics and when they will be covered.

lectures:
Tue 01/20: expressions, variables, assignment, logicals, comparisons, help
Thu 01/22: built-in functions, types, introspection

matlab concepts:

= + - * / \ ^ ; ,
== ~= <= >= ~
1 is true, 0 is false
||, &&, ~, xor
pi, inf, NaN, i, j 

class, help, scientific notation, precedence
sin, cos, tan, exp, log, abs, sqrt, etc. 
diary, format, who, whos, clear 
fix, round, floor, ceil
rand, randn

homework 1, lab 1: matlab basics

lectures:
Tue 01/27 arrays, vectors, and indexing
Thu 01/29 mathematics of linear algebra, matrices
Tue 02/03 linear algebra in matlab
Thu 02/05 scripts
Tue 02/10 i/o, zeros, sparse matrices
Thu 02/12

matlab concepts:

matrices, row and column vectors
element access and assignment
indices, colon syntax, sub-indexing
load, save, zeros, rand, randn
logical arrays
matrix factorizations, eigenvalues

homework 2, lab 2: linear algebra and arrays

lectures:
Tue 02/17 x-y plots
Thu 02/19 mathematics: log-linear relations
Tue 02/24 3d plots

matlab concepts:

linspace, linestyles, plot, semilogy, semilogx, loglog
pcolor, contour, contourf, surf, surfc, 
axis, axis square, axis equal, xticks, yticks, xlabel, ylabel, title
some basic string stuff

homework 3, lab 3: plotting and data analysis

Thu 02/26 in lecture, topics: basics, vectors & matrices, plotting

Tue 03/03 functions,
Thu 03/05 the for loop

lab 4: factorial function, series expansions

Tue 03/10 if statements
Thu 03/12 nesting, timing

lab 5: loan calculator

Tue 03/24 anonymous functions, function handles
Thu 03/26 solving nonlinear equations in one variable
Tue 03/31

matlab concepts:

functions, arguments, return values
if, else, elseif, switch, is
for, while
fprintf, tic, toc
anonymous functions, function handles
fzero, fsolve

Thu 04/02 in lecture, topic: primarily programming

Tue 04/07 mathematics, 1d
Thu 04/09 implementation in matlab

lab 6: Newton search

Tue 04/14 mathematics
Thu 04/16 implementation in matlab

lab 7: Google page rank

Tue 04/21 mathematics
Thu 04/23 implementation in matlab

lab 8: the pendulum

Tue 04/28 mathematics
Thu 04/30 implementation in matlab