Using the IDL Advanced Math and Stats Documentation

The chapters of the IDL Advanced Math and Stats guide group routines with similar computational or analytical capabilities. To locate the appropriate function for a given problem, refer to Functional List of IMSL Routines. If you know the name of the routine you wish to use, consult Alphabetical Listing of IMSL Routines to locate the routine's documentation.

Each chapter of the IDL Advanced Math and Stats provides an overview of the functionality described in that chapter, along with information on the types of problems addressed by that functionality.

Rows versus Columns

IDL Advanced Math and Stats uses the standard linear algebraic convention for two-dimensional arrays: "row" refers to the first index of the array and "column" refers to the second. So for a 2D array A, A(i,j) is the element in row i and column j. The PM procedure makes this easy to visualize:

a = INTARR( 4, 8 ) & a(2,5) = 1 & PM, a 

IDL Prints:

0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0    0    1    0    0 
0    0    0    0    0    0    0    0 
 

Note that this is the opposite of the standard image processing convention used in most IDL documentation, where "column" refers to the first index of the array and "row" refers to the second. Using the standard IDL PRINT procedure, the above array would look like this:

a = INTARR( 4, 8 ) & a(2,5) = 1 & PRINT, a 

IDL Prints:

0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0 
0    0    1    0 
0    0    0    0 
0    0    0    0 
 

For additional information, see Columns, Rows, and Array Majority.

References

References are listed alphabetically by author in References.