Translation of Matlab to Python
Jan 01, 2020
Converting various common Matlab statistical and machine learning tools into Python, with link to Github repo included.
Project Summary:
Converting various common Matlab statistical and machine learning tools into Python, located at this Github Repo.
Background Rationale
My personal motivation from this project comes from having studied electrical and computer engineering at the University of Minnesota, which involves the use of Matlab. Matlab was in fact my first foray into software development, other than C and C++ for embedded devices, though I didn’t even realize I was really developing software at the time - as perhaps many users of Matlab may themselves not realize.
As computing will inevitably continue to become more powerful over the years, the use of terms such as, “Machine Learning,” and “Artificial Intelligence,” has become democratized and expended, and those who work with servers will likely continually be interested in working with those with serious math skills. The terms, “Machine Learning,” or “Artificial Intelligence” to a certain degree is about the capacity to model the world in terms of math and practice said math at volume.
Benefit and to Whom
The, “at volume” side of that statement has to do with the capability to deploy software onto a server. While many of the most talented mathematicians, statisticians and scientists in various fields are still today trained in Matlab in academia, Matlab is not really designed to deploy, “at scale,” in the sense that it is a paid development environment, designed to run on a single Personal Computer or Machine, and includes a yearly fee with upgrades, rather than an open-source computing language such as Python which can be infinitely copied from server to server with no licensing fees.
There are of course advantages and disadvantages to both Python and Matlab, which is discussed in the project page on Github.
Project Status or Outcome
This is an ongoing hobby project. I maintain the repo and update it over time, with the idea being to create a way to assist others in translating from Matlab to Python and hopefully build their projects more intelligently and faster.